


The Light of Munin

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Dark, M/M, Slavery, Torture, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:05:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 70,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beyond the Apocalypse, beyond the Rapture, beyond the reach of memory ... How long can even the strongest love survive?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aubergineautumn](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=aubergineautumn).



> Sweet Charity fic.
> 
> Thanks to Eagle Eye for the beta and hand-holding.
> 
> There is a Demonic Lexicon [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/180210/chapters/264964). I recommend having it open in a separate window for easy reference while reading.

The whole world wide, every day,  
fly Hugin and Munin;  
I worry lest Hugin should fall in flight,  
yet more I fear for Munin.

-The Grímnismál, of the Poetic Edda

  


  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


When Caliban misses his feedings and waterings for a full week, the mute begins to spend his waking hours watching the door at the top of the stairs instead of counting cracks in the walls. He thinks his special word more often in the privacy of his own mind, trying to figure out what it would sound like if he could ever speak it aloud. Not how his _voice_ would sound—that part doesn’t matter—but that word, that special word—he thinks that word could light up the world.

As the second week drags past, he stops pacing around the confines of the basement and curls into a ball in a corner. There, he brings his knees up to his chest and hugs them to his aching, hollow stomach. There are no more thoughts of counting. There is only the door at the top of the stairs and his word, which he clings to even more desperately when the dim magelights overhead go out and tell him that night has come once more.

Midway through the third week, the spiders come.

They squeeze their misshapen bodies in through one of the larger cracks in the wall, chittering and rearing back and waving their front legs in the air. The mute knows that they’re venomous not because of their pulsing, blue color, but because _everything_ is venomous. Caliban made sure to teach him that lesson—not by telling him, the mute has no way of understanding the mage’s clicks and guttural growls—but by showing him.

The mute’s most recent example was only a little larger than the spiders. It was furred and had a long, flowing tail and pink, fluttering wings and oversized floppy ears and there hadn’t been a stinger anywhere in sight. No sign of fangs or claws either.

When it stumbled toward the mute and made its odd noise—something that the mute’s mind told him might be called a purr—he wanted to hold it. He knew that there had to be _something_ wrong with it, despite its harmless appearance, but he still wanted to touch it anyway.

And after a few hours of watching it roll around on the stone floor or flit harmlessly from wall to wall, he did.

The creature felt just as soft as the mute had imagined it would for all of three seconds and then the acid coating its fur began to eat through his fingers. Jerking away from it, the mute stumbled aimlessly around the room with his hand held out before him. In horror, he watched as his flesh softened and sloughed from his bones to fall in steaming puddles on the floor. Finally, when he was dizzy with the pain and choking on the mucus from his own, silent sobs, Caliban’s power smothered his mind and put him out.

Even with the aid of the mage’s most foul-smelling poultice, it took a month for all of the mute’s muscles and skin to grow back.

So he has learned his lesson well, and he knows that the spiders are to be avoided at all costs. He also knows that they aren’t supposed to be in here—Caliban likes to play with him sometimes, but the mage is always, _always_ in the room to watch. To make sure that his blood cow doesn’t get too damaged.

No, these things are intruders.

Lying very still, the mute wishes that the spiders would go away again. Instead, they make a nest out of the ceiling: spinning webs that glisten slickly. When the ceiling is all but hidden by the strands, the spiders come down to the floor. It takes only a couple of seconds for them to find his corner and a moment later they’re skittering all over him. Their hairy legs tickle his skin, making him twitch.

The slight movement makes the spiders hiss, and then they bite, and the venom makes his head spin more than the dehydration and the starvation combined. He feels feverish, like there’s fire running beneath his skin, and the flesh around the bites swells and blackens.

When the lights go out that night, the mute can still see the spiders, glowing like blue neon stars against the ceiling. He can feel them watching him, perhaps waiting for him to die now that they have sunk their fangs in, but he doesn’t die any more than he died when he touched the soft, pink-winged creature. Doesn’t die any more than he died when Caliban cut his throat open along the thin line of scar tissue already there and bled him out into an oversized bucket.

When the light returns in the morning, the swelling has gone down. The mute’s skin is grey, not black, and he doesn’t feel nearly so feverish. There’s an angry surge in the chittering as the spiders swarm over him—this time, they don’t need an excuse to bite. There’s _intent_ behind their actions, and he knows for sure now that these things are intelligent as well as deadly. If he had a voice, he would scream for Caliban to come save him—Caliban protects him, takes care of him; Caliban wouldn’t like this—but all he can do is suck in harsh, barely audible gasps.

The spiders fill him up with venom until he’s trembling and swollen with it, and then retreat again to wait. This time the fever takes the mute away to a place he knows only vaguely, like the aftertaste of a dream.

It’s a wide field full of jutting stones, and he doesn’t know what the place is called or where it is, but he knows that the stones are markers of death. They’re holding the skeletons down, keeping them buried in the earth. There’s a man there, tall and featureless, and the man looks at him and says, in words the mute can actually understand, “You shouldn’t have come.”

Thunder flashes overhead—or maybe that’s lightning—and the crash sounds like a scream, and then the spiders bubble up over everything in a moving, blue carpet and the man and the field of stones go away.

Some time has passed when the mute becomes lucid again. His arms and chest are covered with alarming, black splotches, and one of his hands is swollen up to the size of a bananafruit _(doesn’t sound quite right. maybe it’s applefruit? pearfruit?)_. But he’s mending. His malnourished body is fighting off the effects of the venom. The spiders apparently see it too, and they chitter at him, rearing up on their hind legs.

Weakly, the mute opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue. Ha ha, can’t kill him, motherfuckers.

The spiders surge forward again at the taunt, and he braces himself for another round of stinging bites that never comes. Instead, a distant, fell howl sounds and the chittering stops. When the mute chances a quick glance, the spiders are running in frenzied, disoriented circles: bumping into each other and making hasty swipes with their fangs and then, finally, squeezing their bodies out the same crack they came in through.

It takes an agonizing, exhausting amount of effort, but the mute manages to pull off the thin pants he’s allowed _(they’re like hospital scrubs, he thought to himself once, and he doesn’t remember what those are anymore, but that doesn’t make his initial assessment any less true)_. Getting up seems impossible when all he wants to do is pass out for a while, but he manages that as well. Then he stumbles over to the crack and wedges his pants into it.

That isn’t going to keep the spiders out if they really want back in, but the mute suspects that they’re gone for good. They have either been called to task by that howl or are being hunted themselves, and he’s proven himself too lively for their taste. Plugging up the crack makes him feel better, is all.

The mute tries to return to his corner after the task is done, but he only gets halfway there before collapsing. One bit of the floor is much the same as another, though, and he’s asleep before he knows it.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


Time has passed when he opens his eyes again—enough that his skin is back to its usual pale, sickly color. The only blemishes left are the familiar, light brown spots that fleck the back of his arms and his chest and the old burn scar on his left shoulder. He’s hungrier than ever—his stomach is doing its best to devour itself and his throat is dry enough that scraping it with sand would feel better than swallowing—but the venom is gone. There’s no way of knowing how many cycles of light and dark that took—how many days _(weeks?)_ —but a single glance toward his dust dry water bowl is enough to tell the mute that Caliban still hasn’t come.

He chalks the missing days up to two and goes back to waiting.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


When Caliban still hasn’t returned by the middle of the fourth week, the mute begins to suspect that something has gone wrong. He’s been without food or drink longer—an experiment, he thinks: one that was only abandoned because Caliban didn’t like the way his blood began to thicken after a couple of months—but the mage has never left him this long without a bleeding before. Hardly a day passes when Caliban doesn’t need at least a little—finger pinprick if the mute is lucky, slit wrist or worse if he isn’t—and never more than a week. _Never._

He should have wondered sooner, but he hadn’t—quite—dared. After the incident with the spiders, though, and with his own increasing weakness, the mute understands that he has to do something other than lie here if he wants to avoid withering away into a desiccated husk. He can already tell from the labored beat of his heart that his blood has begun to congeal.

Gathering his final reserves of strength, the mute crawls toward the stairs. At the bottom, he pauses again, breath scraping against his throat. His empty stomach twists round on itself as he peers at the bottom step.

He isn’t supposed to touch the stairs.

The mute remembers all too well what happened the last time he broke that rule—by accident, that was, although he thinks that he might have tried deliberately when Caliban first brought him here—and he doesn’t want to experience that kind of crippling pain again. He also isn’t sure what the debilitating gag reflex that accompanies the pain would do to him right now, when there’s nothing in his stomach to bring up but dust and air.

His head droops, eyes fluttering closed.

Better to lie here and wait. Caliban will come. Or something else will.

What if it’s the spiders?

Startled by the possibility, the mute opens his eyes. He doesn’t think they will—probably not, not after that howl—but they _might_. He rolls his eyes back up so that he can see the ceiling and the abandoned nests there and then, steeling himself, reaches out and brushes his fingertips across the bottom step.

Wood scrapes against his skin, cool and dry and a little rough. Nothing else happens. There’s no pain. No sudden nausea.

 _Okay,_ the mute tells himself in someone else’s voice. _Now get up off the ground and get your ass up those stairs._

It’s kind of hard to disobey a voice that commanding _(and anyway, it feels familiar, like an old friend)_ so the mute doesn’t even try. He hauls himself up the stairs step-by-step, body shaking from the exertion and air rasping in his throat. At the top, he uses one of the railings to haul himself to his feet and then, swaying, opens the door.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


Turns out that there’s an entire building up here. More importantly, there’s also nourishment. The lump of bread the mute finds is crawling with worms and there’s a thin, green scum growing on top of the water in the jug, but he devours everything greedily anyway.

His stomach, unused to such rich fare _(or any fare at all, for that matter)_ rebels against his first few attempts, but eventually it remembers what it’s supposed to do and stops sending everything right back up. The mute suspects that the food might make him sick again later, and hopes that the sickness isn’t bad enough to make his body reject the much-needed sustenance.

With his hunger and thirst temporarily sated, the mute goes exploring. In a small room at the end of the hall, he finally finds Caliban.

At least, the mute _thinks_ it’s Caliban. The body in its gassy stage of decomp is wearing the mage’s robe, after all, and Caliban’s ring, and the tiny, yellow ball of light on its chain. The mute thinks that ball of light used to be his before the mage took it away. Well, Caliban doesn’t need any of his possessions anymore, and the mute’s clothing is still downstairs holding the crack closed _(not going back there, not back into the cellar)_ so he strips the corpse of its rich, purple cloth and hangs the ball of light around his own neck.

The ring, he leaves. It isn’t his and he doesn’t need it. Doesn’t want it, either. He stared at it too many times when Caliban was holding him down and cutting into his body.

There’s nothing left to do here, but for a few minutes the mute studies what’s left of his keeper. As he stands there, it occurs to him that he’s looking for signs of violence—a knife wound, claw marks, contorted limbs. He’s looking for something to explain his keeper’s sudden, unexpected end.

The body lies peacefully on the bed, though, and eventually the mute understands that this was the rarest of things: a natural death.

The mute regards the corpse for a moment longer and then covers up its staring eye sockets with a nearby sheet of parchment. Parchment is precious, he knows, and under normal circumstances he wouldn’t dare to touch it, but he can’t just leave his keeper lying there unmourned. When it’s done, the parchment mask still doesn’t seem like enough—Caliban could be cruel, but he kept the mute housed and fed and relatively safe. He deserves a proper ceremony.

 _Fire,_ he thinks. _I should burn the corpse. Salt it._

But the mute isn’t a mage, to light fires with a gesture. He isn’t a demon, to call forth infernos with a thought. He isn’t a salamander or a phoenix, to summon flames with a touch.

The mute frowns, tugging at his inherited robe with nervous hands.

He hopes that the spiders don’t come back when he’s gone.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


Leaving is easier thought than done.

Oh, the mute finds the exit easily enough, and it doesn’t appear to be warded _(although it was once, the symbols scrawled over its surface in dried blood—_ his _blood—tell him so)_ , but when he eases it open there’s an agonizing flood of light. Blinded, he pulls the door shut again and scrambles away. He finds refuge beneath a nearby table and huddles there, blinking at the painful, blurry ghost of the outside world that has been seared onto his eyes.

The sun has brightened since he last saw it, it seems—or maybe his eyes are just weak after so many _(countless, feels like forever)_ years trapped below the ground with only Caliban’s soft magelights to see by.

The mute will stay here a while, he decides. After all, the sun has to go down sooner or later.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


Unfortunately, the sun is still shining ‘sooner’, and ‘later’ the mute is curled up in agony again—a bad reaction to the bread or the water or both. As a stronger spasm wracks his body, the mute wraps one hand around the leg of the table and holds on while his throat muscles work and a thin, clear line of bile drips out of his mouth.

The food was bad, he knew that when he put it in his mouth. His body needed nourishment too badly not to try, though, and so the mute has to suffer through the shakes and agonizing cramps and, once more, fever.

In his daze, he takes his special word out and turns it over in his head. It soothes like a salve, calming.

 _Sam,_ he thinks. _Sammy._

It sounds like a prayer, or what he remembers of them, anyway.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


When the sickness passes, the mute is too shaken to try the outside world again. Instead, he rummages through the building more carefully and comes up with a stoppered bottle of liquid that smells clean and a jar full of something flaky and pale. Some kind of uncooked grain, maybe. He eats the grain by the fistful, and if it doesn’t taste wonderful then it’s still better than the bread and his stomach rumbles in approval. He’s even happier with the drink, which helps wash away the mealy aftertaste of the grain and sends a warm, happy lassitude through his limbs.

The mute wanders from room to room as he sips from the bottle, finally returning to his keeper’s room—to Caliban’s body. Taking another pull, he squints at the corpse and tries to remember how they met, how Caliban found him. He tries to remember what sort of world is waiting for him on the other side of that door.

None of the images that his labored thoughts kick up are very good.

Monsters, he’s beginning to recall, and demons. Things worse than the spiders and the pink-winged creature combined. The memories are hazy, but he remembers being gutted and ripped up in a hundred different ways, and if Caliban wasn’t always gentle with him then at least there was a purpose behind the bloodlettings. At least he always put a stop to the lessons when the pain got to be too much to bear.

 _Hell,_ the mute thinks.

 _Hell on Earth,_ that other voice—the one that isn’t his, but which he knows from Ago—corrects him. _This is the End of Days, son, and you forgot to have your ticket to Jesusland punched._

Maybe he doesn’t want to go outside after all.

Then again, he has just eaten up the last of the food, and ... and the spiders. They could come back. Or something else could come. Something _worse_.

And maybe _Caliban_ will come back. They—they do, sometimes. He thinks he knows that—thinks he _remembers_ that. Sometimes, if there’s no fire to eat the body or salt to sear the bones, they come back even more powerful _(worse)_ than before. The thought of the mage’s return should relieve him—Caliban was his keeper, he kept the mute safe—but instead horror pools in his stomach, cold and wet.

The bleedings kept them safe, the mute knows that. He has vague recollections of the first months after they came here, when Caliban bled him over and over again in order to paint the perimeter with his blood so that they could keep the world out. Caliban needed the mute’s blood—for defense, for his experiments and spells, or maybe just for trade. But it still _hurt_ , and the feel of the hot liquid draining out of him—that weakening tug—always made him gasp and sob silently.

The mute doesn’t want to go back to that, which means that he has to leave. And anyway, Caliban’s mystical defenses have obviously failed with his death. How else could the spiders have gotten in? How could the mute have climbed the forbidden stairs? How could he have opened the door to the outside?

The mute’s brain, unused for so long, seems to be picking up speed again now that he needs it, and those snatches of time before Caliban found him are getting clearer. There are things Outside, and they’re vicious and capricious and cruel. They hunted him for sport before Caliban came—tortured him. Once, he thinks he might have been eaten—or his intestines, anyway. Further back, there are glimpses of safety and companionship, but no matter how hard he concentrates, they remain vague and disjointed—like overexposed photographs.

The mute had one of those once, a frozen image of himself and another—or were they three? But that snapshot of another time and place was lost, or maybe destroyed. It was gone long before Caliban found him, anyway—both the photograph and the majority of his memories. Worn away by the endless passage of years.

Chewing on his lower lip, the mute shifts his weight. Maybe it would be better to stay here after all ...

But there’s still his word. His special word that he has hung onto when everything else faded to white or crumbled into dust. His word is a talisman. It’s more than a word—it’s a _name_. Oh, it isn’t his, he isn’t so foolish as to think that. He doesn’t need a name, anyway. Names are for conversations. They carry love.

The mute knows that because he remembers, around the hollow, empty spaces of his past, that people name the things they love. They bestow names on their lovers and their cars. They give them to pampered pets.

A blood cow doesn’t have a name. Prey doesn’t have a name.

And if the mute were ever valued enough to rate the status of a pet, he would still never be worthy of a name like _Sam_ , which is powerful and beloved and soothes the terror away when the mute cradles it close in his head.

So Sam is not him, but Sam is _somewhere_ , and if he can only _find_ Sam—perhaps this is what he was doing when Caliban found him, searching—then everything will be all right again. The mute doesn’t expect to be given a name of his own when that happens, but the faint glow of those earliest memories is warm enough that he does dare to hope.

He thinks that Sam might be the other man in his lost photograph.

The mute won’t find Sam here, not in a place like this, and so no matter how terrifying the prospect is, he has to leave. He feels slightly comforted, though, by the thought of his journey’s end.

 _Journey,_ he thinks as another rusted memory falls into place. _Wheel in the sky._

That should be something to see.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


There is no wheel. The mute doesn’t know where that earlier thought _(lie)_ came from. There _is_ a sun, which burns his eyes, but he has remembered enough to know that daylight is safer. There’s still danger, of course—all manner of demons and lower-order, mindless monsters—but most things come out at night. Vampires and werewolves. Ghouls and ghosts and wraiths.

Better the searing light of the sun.

The outside world is filled with the decaying skeletons of buildings and thick, twisting underbrush, and there seem at once to be countless hiding places and none at all. The mute creeps from one crumbling ruin to another, heart hammering from how very exposed he feels. There seem to be eyes on him. Things watching from nooks and crannies and waiting for him to let down his guard.

It’s a laughable delusion. His only weapon is a knife that he inherited _(stole)_ from Caliban. His only armor is the mage’s old robe, which smells a little like dust and blood and a lot like decomp.

He’s alone. Defenseless.

If there really were something out there tracking him, it could slaughter him in a heartbeat.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


The mute travels without incident on that first day, although by the time he realizes that the sun is setting he’s trembling and covered with sweat. From fear, not heat. Without thinking about it, he clambers up onto the top of a convenient wall and curls in on himself, clutching the knife close and peering over the edge.

The mute sees the spiders again that night, a blue glow scurrying at the feet of something grey—skin stretched over bone like parchment. The thing’s knees bend the wrong way round, like a bird’s. Unnatural in something so humanoid.

The troupe passes close without pausing and then, a few minutes later, disappears into the distance. A few minutes after _that_ , a pain-filled scream rises from that direction.

The mute’s heart thuds against his ribcage, but he’s halfway down the wall before he realizes what he’s doing and climbs back up again. He can’t save that unfortunate creature—no power in him: no weapon but a knife. He can only join in its torment.

That doesn’t make him feel any better about hiding here, though. Doesn’t make him feel any less of a coward.  
Curling up again, the mute presses his hands to his ears and waits for the screaming to stop.

Eventually, it does.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


In the morning, he runs into something with horns and sullen, red eyes and taloned claws where there should be hands. He isn’t quick enough to get away. He manages to slash it once across the chest with his knife—a shallow wound that barely beads blood—and then he’s sailing through the air and slamming against a nearby wall hard enough that a puff of dust whuffs out around his body.

The mute coughs—blood in his throat and on his lips—and, despite the pain in his chest, tries to wriggle free as the horned thing stalks closer. There’s nothing to push against—just power and air pinning him in place—and the thing laughs. It says something in a different tongue than the one Caliban used _(but just as foreign, just as incomprehensible)_ and then invisible blades start peeling the skin from the mute’s belly. Tossing his head back, the mute opens his mouth in a silent scream as blood soaks through the front of the robe.

He doesn’t know how long it goes on for—long enough that he’s hazy with the pain, not so long that he passes out—and then the horned thing drops him to the ground. The mute lies unmoving in the weeds, hands cupped protectively over the bloodied mess of his stomach. The thing kicks him once, giving a grunt of disgust, and then wanders away.

Now that he’s here again, the mute remembers this too. Some of the smarter things—the ones that like to rend and hurt—are easily bored by him. He can’t scream, see. What’s the point of causing pain if the meat can’t scream?

Someone explained that to the mute once, long ago, when he was the one with power. When he held a knife in his hand and set it to quivering, terrified flesh.

 _You save the tongue for last so they can beg,_ a low, nasal voice murmurs. _And even when you cut that out, make sure to always leave their vocal chords intact. It’s no fun if they don’t make any noise, now is it?_

He had agreed then, would have done anything to keep that voice pleased.

 _Alistair,_ he thinks, breathing into the dirt.

That’s the second day.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


On the third day, the mute finds a clear running river and drinks long and deep. He throws up the first couple of mouthfuls—maybe the river isn’t as clean as it looks, or his stomach hasn’t healed enough to bear the stress, or he just isn’t used to having something this nice—but the third time is the charm and the water stays down. He’s a little queasy, but that’s a minor inconvenience in comparison with everything else.

The nausea is bad enough to slow him, but not quite debilitating enough for him to risk stopping. Instead of darting from cover to cover, the mute creeps. He cranes his neck around, eyes so wide and intent that they begin to ache after only a few minutes, but better eyestrain than being taken unawares again.

He sees butterflies in the glen up ahead long before he actually reaches it.

They’re beautiful. A glittering rainbow of wings that shimmers and shifts as they flutter about. So many of them, too—thousands, millions maybe: enough to leave the air dense with color.

Part of the mute’s mind categorizes them as harmless—butterflies he remembers, although he never saw as many as this. But he thinks one sat on his arm once, when he was taking a nap by the side of the road, and he thinks that they eat ... fruit? Or maybe vegetables or nuts? At any rate, they aren’t carnivores, and they aren’t poisonous to the touch. And they’re too small to be able to do much damage with a bite, even if they had actual mouths to bite with.

But the mute freezes anyway, scanning for some hint of danger in the idyllic glade. It’s difficult to focus with his stomach so miserable—he’s lucky he caught sight of the butterflies at all. He probably wouldn’t have, if they’d been still. Or if their wings had been even a little less bright than they are.

As he watches, he gradually realizes that there are patterns in the fluttering. Enticing. Alluring. The butterflies swirl together on unseen breezes, soft and light as song, and the mute thinks he can hear a faint voice calling him. The air smells sweet—like honey.

 _Come fly with us, we will not harm you. So small and delicate. Come closer let us kiss you._

The mute only realizes he has moved forward when his bare foot bumps something in the grass. It might be a moss-covered rock, but it didn’t feel solid enough for that, not if it moved with his tiny nudge. Carefully, he prods at the thing with a toe and, when it rocks loosely, uses his foot to roll it over until he’s looking into the face of a green skull. Dirt is clumped in the eye sockets, and blind worms and beetles scurry to bury themselves deeper inside, away from the searing light.

When the mute looks up at the glade again, it isn’t the butterflies he sees—although they are still there, dancing in the air and luring the unwary closer. This time, he sees the forest floor, which is just as green as the rest of the world, but strangely lumpy, as though there are rocks tumbled beneath the vegetation. In places, bleached, white spires stick up like branches, but the mute presses one hand to his chest—feels the slender lines of bone within—and knows that those spires were never part of any tree.

He’s careful not to look at the butterflies again as he skirts the glade.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)   


Dusk is drawing in on the mute when he hears it—roars and clashes and bellows from behind him, the sound of battle. The noise is distant but rapidly coming closer, and his pulse speeds. Although he’s still nauseous, this new, concrete fear urges him to break into a weary trot. The mute stumbles past burnt-out doorways—all that’s left of the buildings to which they once provided entry—and towering trees that he knows he can’t climb. His eyes are wide, darting from side to side as he searches for somewhere to hide from whatever is coming.

The monsters in this world are always fighting each other. They snarl and bite and snap and rend and leave red, messy carcasses to rot beneath the sun. But the violence doesn’t leave them too distracted to notice when they stumble across new, weak prey. Sometimes, that kind of discovery will end the battle as the monsters put aside their differences in order to play with fresh sport. The mute has seen it happen. He’s had it happen to him.

The mute didn’t know it was possible to shudder and run at the same time, but it must be because he’s managing it now. Sweat trickles down his back and soaks into the robe as he dodges beneath a low branch. There are other noises around him as he flees—looks like he isn’t the only easy meat in the area. Something small and green-furred skitters across his path. A bird flutters up into the encroaching purple of the sky.

From behind, the sounds of battle are drawing near.

 _No,_ the mute thinks as he puts on an extra burst of speed. _No no no no._

Something looms out of the darkness in front of him. It appears abruptly enough that he believes, for a heart-stopping moment, that it’s alive. It’s some hulking, boxy monster, and he can’t run from it because there are other monsters approaching from behind him and—

It isn’t a monster at all, but a building. Not just a husk or a solitary wall, either, but an actual, four walls and a roof _building_.

Despite his momentary panic, the mute hasn’t stopped running, and now he reaches deep inside of himself and dredges up reserves that he didn’t think he possessed. The fighters are close now—so very, terrifyingly close—but the building is closer. The building is closer and if it has stood this long, then it’s strong. It can protect him.

The fear blanketing the mute’s mind leaves the question of logistics unasked until he has reached the base of the building and is running his hands over pitted concrete. No door. There’s no door. How can he get inside if there’s no door?

Panic is returning, gnawing its way from his stomach up through his chest and toward his spine. Panic is numbing his body and leaving him frozen, stupidly, right out here in the open where the fighters will be bound to see him.

How fucking stupid could the builders of this place have been not to have installed a door?

With a belated stutter of hope, the mute realizes that they _couldn’t_ have been that stupid—not the builders of something so strong and enduring. Which means that there has to be a door somewhere, if only he can find it. As the terror recedes, memories of a hundred different buildings tumble in. They’re all shapes and sizes and colors, some made of wood and some of stone or brick, but they have one thing in common.

They don’t have doors on every side.

Without another second’s hesitation, the mute lurches into a stumbling run to the right. He’s certain that he will round the corner and see his salvation, but of course there’s no door on this side, either. As the mute hurries along the second wall, the sounds of battle have grown close enough that he would have been able to watch if the building weren’t in the way. He lets out a rasping, voiceless sob. He’s so close, damn it. So very, very close to salvation.

The next roar that comes shakes the ground beneath his feet, knocking him off balance, and he tumbles onto the dirt. He’s up the next moment, ignoring the flare of pain that’s now radiating up and down his right forearm, where he tried to catch himself. His mind flies ahead of his body as he begins to run again, visualizing another blank wall, visualizing a death trap. The illusion is so strong that, when he skids around the corner several seconds later, it’s all he sees. Then sweat drips into his eyes, stinging, and he blinks it away.

When he looks again, there’s a dark gap less than halfway down the length of wall—an opening where a wooden door has rotted away. The mute whispers a quiet prayer in his head—his special word thrice over, the only way he knows to pray—and hurries toward it, gripping the wall to keep from going over as another roar sends tremors through the earth. He’s still holding onto the wall as he turns to go into the building and that’s what saves him.

Before he’s consciously aware of what he’s looking at, his brain sends out an alarm and he digs his heels into the earth in an attempt to stop. He comes to a lurching halt, overbalancing for a few, terrifying heartbeats, and then his grip on the crumbling doorframe pulls him back.

Dusk is coming quickly now—almost as quickly as the battle—and although night has already darkened the inside of the building, the mute’s eyes have adjusted enough for him to see the pit before him. He can’t see the bottom of the chasm, and although it might be only ten feet away, or twenty, he imagines farther. He imagines _forever_ , the floor eaten away by time and swallowed up by the earth, and he almost tumbled into that same maw in his feverish desire for safety.

Panting, the mute casts his eyes up, hoping to see a ledge he can scramble onto, but there’s nothing. The building is as hollowed-out as his memories, with only metal girders and broken pipes sticking out crazily from the ceiling—all of them far too high to reach, even if he were capable of climbing such slender, smooth objects.

Through the gaping windows high in the opposite wall, there’s a flutter of motion against the darkened sky and the mute hunches up against the side of the doorway, getting as close to the chasm as he can without falling. This time the roar comes from directly overhead, dislodging one of the metal pipes and sending it plummeting into the dark, and in the next moment—the mute turns to watch—something enormous and misshapen soars into view.

 _Squid,_ he thinks, and _dragon_ , and although he can’t actually remember what either of those things are, somehow he knows that this monster is a sickening combination of the two. A name comes to him then, hideous and lurching: Leviathan.

Even in the midst of the mute’s fear, the name is a revelation that tilts his meager understanding of the world on its axis. As long as he can remember, he has believed that names are only given in love. The beast overhead, however, is grey and moist and noxious looking, and could never inspire that kind of emotion.

Sometimes, the mute realizes now, names are bestowed out of hatred.

It takes the mute a moment to notice the other fighter—partly because he’s distracted by his revelation, partly because it’s so small in comparison—but then he sees a flash of white, flickering like the butterflies just hours before, and the flicker is a pair of wings. From there, the mute can make out four limbs and a head, and a breastplate, and something long and slender that he thinks is called a spear.

He has no trouble naming the spear’s wielder, though—he bears memories of these creatures that are all too clear.

Angel. Warrior of the Lord.

This is one of the things that took Sammy away from the mute—or was the mute the one they took away? He can’t seem to recall right now which way it was, but either way the outcome was the same. Either way, Sam was lost to him. The mute thinks that he saw his— _what? what were they to each other?_ —Sam again, but by then it was too late. He was too late.

Above, the angel thrusts its spear into Leviathan’s side and the immense creature gives another bellow. It wheels, slapping at the angel with one tentacle, and the angel flits out of the way, soaring up and over Leviathan’s back to disappear on the far side. There’s a moment of near-silence and then the mute hears, like the roar of the sun, a single, commanding word.

“ _ **Hesbrios.**_ ”

It’s the angel’s voice, at once beautiful and terrifying, and the sound is accompanied by a sudden burst of flame that rocks through the darkening sky. The flame slams into Leviathan, sending it tumbling back—and with a faint, unreal sense of alarm, the mute realizes that the monster is heading straight toward the building.

There’s no time to flee. No time for any sort of rational thought at all.

The mute takes a single step backwards in an instinctive attempt to avoid what’s coming and tips over into the darkness. If he had a voice, he would scream—as it is, the attempt shoots gagged sparks of pain through his throat. He falls for several, endless seconds and then slams into something hard _(not a bottomless pit at all, it seems)_ at the same time as Leviathan crashes into the building above him.

This place might have withstood thousands of years of Hell on Earth, but there is no withstanding such a direct assault and the sound is indescribable. It’s deafening. The mute has time to be grateful he can’t see his death coming for him and then jerks as the first of the avalanche strikes him. Something smooth and round and unyielding goes through his stomach like butter, pinning him to the ground. A chunk of concrete crushes his right hand. There’s a roaring in his ears—he’ll be flattened in seconds—and then a second pole punches through his chest and there’s a flare of light.

Heat washes through the mute’s body and he tries to scream again as the two poles impaling him are ripped away. The concrete crushing his hand lifts as well, but that sensation is secondary to the warm, wet gushes of blood that are soaking through the robe. _Such a waste,_ the mute thinks, and _Caliban will be angry_ , and then darkness takes him.


	2. Chapter 2

When he wakes up again, he’s confused. There’s stone and twisted metal above him. Stone and metal to his right and left. Stone beneath his back. And the stone is glowing.

He’s in a cocoon of stone and metal and light and he doesn’t know how he got here.

The mute rolls over onto his side as a prelude to rising and then freezes, wincing. His right hand aches fiercely, but his chest and stomach are even worse: his flesh feels raw there, tender and leaking. He brings his left hand up to his chest and brushes trembling fingers against his old keeper’s robe. The fabric is torn, stiff with crusted blood, and he remembers now. Remembers the angel, and Leviathan, and falling, and the sharp, piercing metal that skewered first his stomach and then his chest.

He should be dead. Why isn’t he dead? Why isn’t he crushed beneath a thousand tons of concrete and metal?

The mute moves again, more carefully this time, and drags his hand against a piece of glowing stone. The glow pulses for a moment, warm to the touch, and the pulse brings out the color—yellow bordering on gold—enough for the mute to connect it with the ball of light he wears around his neck. When he glances down, he isn’t surprised to see that the chain hangs empty: golden ball nothing more than a couple of jagged shards of clear glass clinging to their metal fastening. More shards speckle the bloodstained robe around the torn fabric.

The mute’s memories may be jumbled and broken, but he’s been around magic enough to know how it works. He knows that spells have identifying characteristics—a color, a sound, a scent, a taste—that flavor both trigger and effect. Caliban’s spells were run through with the mute’s blood, the binding that held them together, and they always tasted of copper. They burned sullen, blood red.

This spell isn’t Caliban’s. This spell belongs to someone else, someone who glows that brilliant, yellow-golden color. Someone who imbues his magic with the scent of sulfur.

The mute brushes the shards of glass from his chest and the wound gives a deep, throbbing pulse at even that faint pressure. The pain is worrying enough that he pauses in his musings over the spell _(it’s not like it’s going to make a difference whether he understands what’s going on)_ in order to pull the tear open enough to see what sort of shape he’s in.

There’s a shallow indentation in his chest where the metal pole struck him. The indentation is a perfect, circular shape, and he thinks that the flesh there is reddened, but can’t be sure through all the crusted blood. Carefully—oh so carefully and lightly—he touches the indentation with one fingertip and immediately jerks it away again. He isn’t bothered by the pain so much as he is by the _feel_ —spongy and hot, as though he could scoop the healing flesh out with one finger. It feels just like his hand did when it was rebuilding itself and the knowledge makes him squirm weakly, disgusted. Swallowing thickly, he casts his eyes away from his ruined chest and back up toward the concrete and metal above him.

One of the metal poles on the other side of that yellow light is tipped with blood.

The pieces fall into place and the mute realizes what must have happened. When the building fell, some of the debris rained down faster than the rest. A pole went through his stomach. Another speared his chest—and at the same time speared the ball of light on its chain, breaking the glass and releasing the spell contained inside.

The mute has no idea what the spell is supposed to do, but he can see at least one of its effects in the form of the egg-shaped cocoon of light that surrounds him. That cocoon must have pushed out when the glass broke—must have been the force that pulled both poles from his body and lifted the concrete crushing his hand. It’s a shield, isolating and protecting its bearer. If the mute had known what he carried, he could have broken the glass before the falling metal pierced him and saved himself some pain.

He should be relieved to be alive. Should be overjoyed that, pitiful as he is, he was saved. But as the mute stares at the ceiling of his shield, there’s nothing more than a miserable, shrinking feeling in his stomach.

He hasn’t been crushed by the weight of the building, hasn’t been pinned and mangled by the debris—but then again, in a way he has. The building isn’t crushing his bones, but it’s still pressing down on the shield of light, which isn’t a cocoon at all, but a coffin.

He’s trapped.

He’s trapped and, sooner or later, he’s going to shrivel up into the blood-congealed mummy he feared he would become in the basement. Or maybe he’ll get lucky and the magic will fade before that happens, allowing the building to finish its fall. Nothing lasts forever, after all, and magic weakens with age. Spells dry up and blow away the same as everything else.

The same as he will, one way or another.

It’s stupid, won’t change anything and is a horrible waste of moisture, but the mute curls up on his side and cries.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Four hundred and sixty five separate chunks of concrete make up the walls of his coffin. Seventy-two fragments of metal form the lock on the casket.

His hand doesn’t hurt anymore.

The indents in his chest and stomach have almost finished filling in.

He’s still going to die.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Overhead, there are things walking over the rubble.

The mute can hear them, muffled and distant. If he had a voice, he could scream—cry out for help. There’s a chance that whatever’s up there would hear and rescue him. Save him.

A howl filters down through the concrete, eerie and familiar. Werewolves, then.

The mute shuts his eyes and imagines being bitten. He envisions having his flesh torn open and gulped down in steaming, bloodied strips. He imagines how much it would hurt to be eaten alive.

He still wishes he could scream.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

The light of his cocoon has begun to gutter.

Days or weeks or months after the werewolves, who can say, except that he can still move, and he has just enough moisture left in him to weep.

 _Sam,_ he prays, pressing the heels of his hands over his eyes. _Sammy Sam._

But he knows that Sam isn’t going to come.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

At first, the mute thinks it’s part of a dream.

He has dreamt of rescue so many times that the sound has the feel of deja vu to it—the creak and crash of rubble being shifted above him, of something tunneling down. Then comes light and fresh air and deliverance.

He shuts his eyes on the dream and rolls over. Hope is cruel, and he just wishes that it would go away.

He falls asleep to the shifting creak of metal and stone.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When he wakes, the sound is closer.

The mute blinks a couple of times, confused, and then glances up at the ceiling of his coffin.

He can see light through the cracks in the concrete. Not the yellow-gold of the spell, but white. The blinding, blurred light of day.

 _Sammy,_ he thinks. His eyes ache with the need to cry, but he has no more tears left in him and so he just blinks again, rapidly, and bites his lower lip. _Sammy came for me. He came._

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It isn’t Sam.

The mute doesn’t actually remember what Sam looks like, but he knows that this isn’t him. Not this cracked, burnt thing peering in at him with red eyes and a shark’s mouth, row upon row of jagged teeth. The thing’s face is barely human, but it isn’t quite alien enough that the mute misses the disgusted surprise when it sees him.

Sam would never have looked at him like that.

“Eresh dgrayvk rill,” the burnt thing gurgles.

The mute blinks up at it and doesn’t move.

“ **Eresh dgrayvk rill,** ” his savior repeats more insistently.

It’s a question, the mute realizes—not that he has any way of knowing what the question is. Not that he has any means of answering.

The burnt thing seems to realize that it isn’t going to be getting any meaningful response and snorts in disgust. For a moment, the mute thinks that it is going to go away and leave him there. Instead, it shifts its weight and punches through the cocoon of light with one clawed hand. The light gives one final, feeble flicker and dies. As the sides of the mute’s former coffin groan and begin to fall in on him, the burnt thing grips his ruined robe and hauls him out.

The mute coughs at the dust that the collapse kicks up, blinking furiously in an attempt to clear his eyes. He isn’t in the open air, not yet: he can tell that much from the way that the dust is taking its time dissipating. Tilting his head back, he sees a circle of blinding blue sky at the end of what looks like a well—the remains of the building piled high around them. His savior must have sensed his presence, to have found him so unerringly. Or maybe it sensed the spell.

“Agrukni,” the burnt thing says, drawing the mute’s attention back into the hole. The word is a command, and although the mute doesn’t understand whatever demonic tongue his savior is using, he comprehends the wave of exhaustion that washes through him easily enough.

“Agrukni,” the burnt thing repeats, and the drowsiness spills into his thoughts, slowing them.

Agrukni. Sleep.

He does.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When the mute wakes again, he’s in motion. It only takes a couple awkward, jouncing steps for him to understand that he has been slung over the burnt thing’s shoulder and is being carried around like _(a piece of luggage)_ he’s as light as a bird. His rescuer must be very strong. Then again, it _has_ been quite a while since the mute has had any substantial nourishment, so maybe he _is_ that light. Maybe the starvation and dehydration have hollowed him out inside so that he’s nothing more than bones and blood.

His head spins with the possibility, which would seem impossible if he couldn’t feel every one of his ribs poking into the burnt thing’s shoulder. If his hipbones didn’t feel cutting sharp. For a moment, his dazed mind is fooled into an illusion of floating and he’s certain that the only thing anchoring him is the burnt thing’s arm, clenched tightly around the back of his knees. Then the arm is gone and the burnt thing is shrugging. As the mute is dumped onto the ground, he regains all of his weight at once with the jarring impact—and maybe he doesn’t have as much mass as he used to have, but he’s still solid enough for the fall to leave him bruised and aching.

There’s stone beneath him and voices around him—a jeering mesh of tongues that he can’t understand. Some of the voices don’t sound like language at all, and would be impossible for the mute to manage even if he had a voice. One is comprised almost entirely of growls, another of high-pitched clicks. And, lower to the floor, comes a chittering rattle that makes him think of black, beetle carapaces.

“Ctusyngkni,” something says from above him.

The mute recognizes the wet slurring as his savior’s voice, but the meaning continues to elude him. Whatever the burnt thing wants can’t be good, though. The mute may be foolish enough to feel a faint pulse of gratitude for his release, but he isn’t simple enough to think that he was brought here to be pampered. Squeezing his eyes more tightly shut, he hunches in on himself protectively.

“Ctusyngkni,” the burnt thing says again, more sternly, and a taloned foot connects solidly with his lower back.

The kick punches the mute’s breath out and he lets the momentum roll him away. He learned long ago that if he makes himself pliant, the beatings hurt less. He hasn’t rolled more than a couple of inches before a hand hooks into the back of the robe and jerks him back and up.

“ **Drtsyan ctusynghni!** ” The words are a snarl this time and, when accompanied by the pull on his robe, their meaning is clear.

 _Stand up._

Scrambling to obey and save himself from another kick, the mute finally chances a glance around and shudders. Some of the creatures surrounding him are monsters he has no name for, but some—like the roiling, shapeless cloud in the corner and the cloven-hoofed, horned man lounging in a chair—are clearly demons, and not all that low on the food chain either. Not with those blind, white eyes.

Those eyes melt into others, white like leprosy, and the mute feels the ghost of a memory brush his hair. _My good boy,_ a nasal voice whispers through the years. _My star pupil._

The mute’s chest constricts with a conflicting rush of emotions—terror, pride, disgust, relief—and he tears his eyes away from the demons to look down at the floor. The floor is safe enough, it doesn’t trigger any frightening slivers of memory, and he stares at it studiously while doing his best to hold still. Maybe if he can manage to look inoffensive and harmless enough the demons won’t hurt him too badly. Maybe he’ll get lucky and they’ll get bored and toss him out into the world to die when they finish ripping him apart.

There’s a moment of near-silence, followed by a brief spurt of chittering, and then the ring of demons bursts into laughter. At least, the mute _thinks_ it’s laughter: most of the noises are as alien and indecipherable as ever. But the horned demon is laughing clearly enough, and there’s a familiar echo in the pattern of the other sounds. From there, it isn’t difficult for the mute to understand that they’re laughing at him.

The mute flushes and, for one hot, bright moment, wishes that he still had the knife he took from Caliban. But the knife in his mind—the knife he _wants_ —doesn’t actually look much like Caliban’s. It’s heavier and has runes etched down the silver blade. A flicker of memory wraps his hand around the knife’s handle, plunges the business end into something that looks like a woman but isn’t. Lightning sparks from her flesh, and black dust, and then the memory swirls away and he sways a little on his feet, blinking.

Wishful thinking, that must have been. A daydream. A fantasy. Because that knife was a demon killer, and he’d have to be a lot more delirious than he is right now to believe that he ever possessed something like that. He’s the prey, he isn’t the hunter. No matter what lies his confused mind is trying to tell him.

Prey doesn’t fight, it _runs_ , and so the mute refocuses himself and takes a second, darting look around at his surroundings. Searching for a way out.

This place, wherever it is, isn’t falling apart. He thought that Caliban’s house was well preserved, but it doesn’t hold a candle to this immense room, which is all polished black stone and red tapestries. A series of windows are set high in the walls—the arching frames still hold unbroken panes of glass that have been stained in pretty, nonsense patterns. A wide, central staircase leads to a balcony running the length of the far wall and overlooking the main area of the room. Five shadowed openings lead off from the balcony and deeper into the building, which the mute has tentatively begun to consider a castle.

He considers the stairs and those high openings for a heartbeat before dismissing them. Main entrances to castles, as far as he remembers, aren’t usually on the second floor, which means that running that way would only take him deeper into danger. Dropping his eyes, he concentrates on his more immediate surroundings.

The demons are here, obviously—some standing and others lounging around on red couches or plush armchairs—and he’d have to get past them first. Then he would have to choose the right hallway—there are seven leading away from the first floor, and he was unconscious when he was carried in, so he has no way of knowing which hall leads to freedom. Perhaps most daunting, though, is the pack of hounds lounging by the fireplace opposite the staircase.

They aren’t hounds, of course—not really—and although the mute has seen more obviously dangerous creatures, none of them has ever left him feeling so cold and cornered. That pack with their white, lolling tongues and red, burning eyes would bring him down before he took more than a single step toward the hall.

Looking more carefully around at the demons, the mute considers which one would do the least damage: which might want a pet rather than a toy. His eyes touch on the formless cloud, and it drifts in toward him. Sweating, the mute cuts his eyes away, and the demon gibbers something in a tongue that makes his mind hurt.

He takes an instinctive step backward and runs into a solid body—the burnt thing, which grips the mute’s chin with one clawed hand and tilts his head back up to face the formless demon. It gibbers again and this time panic slips in and wraps around the mute’s throat—that sound, he can’t stand that sound. Heedless of probable repercussions, he squeezes his eyes shut and starts to fight the burnt thing’s grip, pulling at its hand and trying to squirm away from its chest.

Almost immediately, pain lashes into his back. The familiar trickle of blood doesn’t follow, which means that he isn’t actually being injured, but the pain is real enough. As the mute’s struggles redouble, he opens his mouth in a panting, voiceless cry. Somehow, he manages to thrash free from the burnt thing’s grip and takes a single, stumbling step before power wraps around him and brings him up short.

The mute is held still as phantom lashes rain down across his shoulders and back and ass, leaving his skin burning with illusory pain. By the time the punishment stops, he’s hanging limply in the weave of power. If he had enough moisture to manage it, he’d be crying. As it is, his mouth hangs open as voiceless, choked sobs spill from his throat.

The power holding him still adjusts itself and his head is tilted up and back. That gibbering, maddening voice utters a command and the mute’s eyes open without his permission. He’s forced to watch as the demon approaches—just a black cloud with blind, floating eyes, but it leaves his heartbeat tumbling over itself violently in his chest.

When the demon comes to a stop just in front of him, the mute thinks that the pain will begin again, but it doesn’t. Instead, two smoky tendrils snake out from the darkness and stroke just before his eyes.

They’re going to blind him, the mute realizes. They’re going to take his eyes and leave him blind so that he can’t run away while they take the rest of him apart.

Except that’s when footsteps ring out from the balcony and everything goes quiet and still.

Immobilized by the demon’s power, the mute can’t turn his head to assess this new threat. He rolls his eyes to the side, trying to get at least a glimpse, and can’t make out more than a man-sized blur at the top of the stairs. His body is already reacting to the new danger, heart fluttering wildly and stomach pulling taut. But beneath the fear, the mute feels ... he feels strange.

Something in his chest—something that has been dormant for so long he forgot it was there, if he ever knew—has awoken and is starting to unfold. Trembling, shivering waves rush through his body as the force inside of him reaches out for the figure at the top of the balcony and fastens onto it.

The mute’s body convulses against the cloud-shaped demon’s hold as a connection is established. Suddenly, the fear has been pushed to the back of his mind and other, unfamiliar feelings are front and center. His skin is flushed and he’s hungry for things that have nothing to do with food. Beneath the robe, his penis rapidly fills.

The demon holding him starts to speak and is interrupted by a new voice—curt and cutting and cold. The mute doesn’t recognize this language either, but he thinks it might be close to the one the burnt thing uses. He doesn’t need to understand the words to react to the voice, though, and it’s doing alarming, confusing things to his body. Panting, the mute arches against the demon’s confining power. His vision blurs as the voice slicks its way inside of him and leaves his ass aching and his penis leaking.

When the demon releases him a moment later, the mute is too out of it to do anything but collapse limply to the floor. There’s a rustle of movement all around him as the demons withdraw—click of claws on stone as the pack of hounds follows.

But the mute isn’t alone. He knows that he isn’t alone because the hunger riding his body is still rising, pushing any rational thoughts of escape and safety from his mind and filling it with aimless, desperate need. He knows that he isn’t alone because the force inside of his chest is still pulsing, still latched onto that half-glimpsed figure at the top of the stairs.

It’s been years— _centuries_ —and the force is so very, very hungry.

An errant current of air sweeps across the mute’s face. It’s his only warning before hands are on him again, yanking him up onto his hands and knees. There’s a tearing sound and then another current of cold air across his back and down over his ass and then the hands are on his _skin_ and he shudders. Heat flares, blinding him, and he chokes on his inhalation. Focused on the feel of those long fingers to the exclusion of everything else, the mute misses the rest of the robe being torn away—only knows it happened when the hands are higher, when they are dragging roughly over his shoulders and across his chest and over his nipples and then down to his stomach.

Biting his lower lip, the mute arches back into the touch and the hands return to his ass. _Yes,_ he thinks, although he doesn’t know what it is that he’s agreeing to, and the hands tighten and pull his cheeks apart. The mute lets out a harsh breath, which is the closest he can come to a whine without a voice of his own, and cants his hips back. His penis is dripping steadily now, and the scent of the fluid is nothing like urine: not acidic enough, too musky and salted.

“Areshna,” that silky, caressing voice growls, and he’s still shuddering with the force of it when something thick and hot plunges inside of him.

The mute jerks forward reflexively—it burns, and he doesn’t know what’s happening, and part of him is so terrified he’s surprised that he’s still conscious—but he’s settling again even before one of the hands on his ass moves to the jut of his hip to keep him in place. Because some part of him is terrified, yes, but that force inside his chest is elated and reaching greedily for more and his body is awash with more pleasure than he can ever remember feeling. That thick length keeps moving inside of him—thrusting deep and then pulling almost all the way out and then burying itself again—and with the tiny corner of his rational mind left to him the mute realizes that he’s being fucked.

It’s all—it’s all wrong, though. This sensation is twisted around backward from his memories, which are admittedly fragmented but which show his penis _(cock)_ plunging in and out of a soft, wet opening. But he isn’t the one doing the thrusting right now, and the burn has subsided but his ass doesn’t feel anywhere near as wet as his memories indicate that it should and _oh_.

The mute sucks in a ragged breath and fights to dig his fingers into the floor, trembling in the aftershocks of the most intense sensation he has ever felt. What—what in the world was tha— _oh God_. He hasn’t thought that word in ages—God doesn’t exist, he learned that much long before Caliban found him, no use calling on a lie—but he finds himself thinking it again and again as the cock continues to pound into that sparking, rapturous place inside of him. He’s pushing back as best he can now, trying to get more of these sensations, and the force inside his chest is so content it’s purring, a deep rumble that spreads warmth through his body. Then the hands on his waist and ass tighten and that gorgeous voice dribbles out in a low, hurt moan, and the cock plunges in one more time and is still.

The mute is still horribly hard and dripping. He needs—he needs more, needs just a little push to resolve the wretched tension inside of him—but when the cock moves again it pulls away completely and the hands leave him.

 _No,_ he thinks as the muscles in his ass clench and unclench helplessly. _Come back._

He’s wet inside, so full of moisture that it’s leaking out and running down his inner thigh in a cool trail, and he doesn’t know what to do. The force that led him into this position has quieted again, sated and content, and when he hangs his head and looks down at his cock he’s helpless to do anything about the swollen, reddened need he sees there.

The blow comes from nowhere and everywhere, lashing into his body with invisible, ethereal hooks and then ripping out again. The mute collapses on his side, hugging himself and feeling for the wounds that must surely be there but finding nothing but whole, healthy flesh.

 _In my mind,_ he tells himself. _It’s all in my mind._

The knowledge doesn’t help when the blow comes again, and again, and again, until he’s sobbing in that dry, dehydrated way to which he’s becoming accustomed and rocking in place and half-certain that all of the flesh has been pulled from his bones chunk by bloodied chunk. His cock isn’t a problem anymore, lying shriveled and pathetic between his legs.

Gradually, as his mind adjusts to the presence of pain, the mute becomes aware of yelling. It’s the same voice from before—the voice that stroked him in deep, intimate places—but now it’s scathing and thorned with anger. It leaves him bleeding inside as surely as real thorns would leave him bleeding without, and the mute would rather have the cloud demon come back and talk at him than have to listen to this. He isn’t given the option, of course, and when the blows stop a hand tangles in his disheveled, matted hair and wrenches his head up from the fetal position he curled into during the pain.

The mute opens his eyes—reflex—and, for the first time, clearly sees the figure from the top of the stairs.

No matter how close in form, it isn’t a man. No man would have those enormous, shadowed wings spreading from his shoulder blades. No man would have a long, slender tail lashing back and forth in agitation. No man would have eyes like that: all gone over gold and crackling with power like electricity.

The not-man’s hair is long and unkempt, but not matted like the mute’s, and it looks clean enough. The not-man’s whole body, in fact, is startlingly clean and cared for. He looks strong and well fed, and the mute would be willing to bet that he hasn’t missed any meals in the last couple of centuries.

Sinuous, red lines mottle what the mute can see of the not-man’s skin—which is a lot, considering the fact that he’s only wearing a low-slung pair of black pants. His cock peeks out from the front—drooping now but still large enough to be alarming, and shiny from traces of the salty, musky liquid he pumped into the mute.

As the mute stares up with wide eyes, he realizes that the red lines are moving. Curling across the not-man’s skin like living creatures, they form arcane symbols and then break apart again into meaningless, jagged patterns. The not-man is unmarked only where his skin is marred—four slashes slant across the left side of his face, the topmost bisecting his eyebrow and crossing the bridge of his nose, and shiny burn scars run down his left side in streaking lines, as though he was once struck by lightning.

He’s probably the most terrifying thing that the mute has ever seen—mostly because the mute has never been face to face with such towering rage before. And the not-man _is_ enraged. There’s no mistaking the fury twisting his face into a hate-filled snarl.

“Eresh kvralt ras?” the not-man shouts, tightening his grip in the mute’s hair and wrenching his head back further. “ **Ras?** ”

The mute tries to pull free and is backhanded for his trouble. This blow, which rocks his head back despite the not-man’s hold on his hair, leaves the mute’s lower lip split and bleeding.

More than ever, he wishes he could speak. Wishes that he could understand the question so that he could answer and stop being punished for something that isn’t his fault. He can’t help being stupid and weak and mute.

“Aresh grahd,” the not-man growls.

A moment later, the mute is assaulted by a sensation worse than the lashes—like something fumbling across the surface of his mind, searching for a way in. The mute responds instinctively, tightening walls he didn’t know he had and making his thoughts as small as possible. The fumbling becomes a pounding becomes a tearing, but while agony rips through his skull and chunks of his wall are being torn away, they are somehow rebuilding themselves faster than the not-man can destroy them. Finally, when his thoughts are blurred and bleeding around the edges, the not-man releases him and stands with a sharp movement.

He stands over the mute for a minute, looking down with a cold, hostile expression. The lines swirling through his skin have slowed to a more sedate pace, and their color has darkened to something approaching black. The mute dares to hope it means that the not-man is calmer—that he has either somehow appeased or rode out the sudden flash of anger.

Without looking away, the not-man tucks his cock back inside his pants. The invisible wave that goes out through the room as soon as it’s safely hidden again makes the mute’s muscles twitch. There’s no mistaking that for anything but a summons. The only question is for whom—or what—that summons was meant. The mute can’t say that he’s surprised when it’s the burnt thing that appears several minutes later.

His rescuer comes straight to the not-man’s side and then kneels, bowing its head. Again, it isn’t anything unexpected. The mute would have to be blind and deaf to miss the power that the not-man wears like a mantle. If there is a king here, then the not-man is he.

Without waiting for the burnt thing to rise, the not-man begins to speak—more questions, thrown out in a rapid, curt manner. The burnt thing, head still lowered, answers in even words that the mute wishes he could follow.

Midway through the terse inquisition, the not-man’s eyes swing back to the mute and narrow. Heart pounding in his chest, the mute holds himself still as the not-man steps close again. When the not-man leans down, he squeezes his eyes shut in anticipation of pain that doesn’t come. Instead, there’s the brush of fingers against his chest and a shift around his neck as the chain from which the ball of light used to hang is lifted. Hesitantly, the mute peeks up to find the not-man studying the remains of the fastener and then tenses as those golden, fierce eyes flick to his.

“Fehyrd yg ral?” the not-man asks. If his voice isn’t kind, at least it isn’t cutting anymore. He sounds more curious than anything else.

The mute licks blood from his healing lip and tentatively shakes his head in an attempt to indicate that he has no idea what the not-man is asking. The motion, or maybe the way it makes the necklace’s chain shift, draws the not-man’s eyes to his throat and the not-man frowns. Dropping the necklace, he reaches out to trace the scar running across the mute’s throat. The touch is impersonal—more an evaluation than a caress—but it stirs things low in the mute’s groin anyway.

Then the not-man drops his hand and glances over his shoulder at the burnt thing. He rattles off an incomprehensible string of words and the burnt thing nods. When the not-man turns back to the mute, he’s smiling. The expression leaves the mute’s chest cold.

Caliban used to smile at him like that before his lessons.

“Areshna,” the not-man purrs, dragging his hand down the mute’s chest and stomach to grip his limp cock. He squeezes once, hard enough that the mute winces, and then lets go.

He doesn’t look back once as he climbs the stairs and disappears from sight.


	3. Chapter 3

The burnt thing brings the mute down several flights of stairs and through a maze of hallways and, although the mute has never been here before and is hopelessly disoriented by all the turns, he knows exactly where they’re going. He can hear the screams coming from the torture chamber long before the burnt thing drags him through the doorway.

The mute gets one, accidental view of the room before dropping his eyes and staring steadfastly at the floor. The brief glimpse is enough to leave him hyperventilating and trembling—shining blades and bright smears of blood and steaming piles of flesh that were never meant to see the air. There are chains on the walls and the tables and the mute is about to be locked into place himself, he knows he is.

And this time, there won’t be any offers like the one he dimly remembers freeing him once before. None of the demons here will be handing him a knife of his own.

As a sharp wave of panic crashes through him, the mute shuts his eyes and clutches his special word close. No matter how much they hurt him, he can’t lose it. There are already too many hollows in his mind, aching and empty. He can’t lose this last, most precious piece of his past like he lost everything else.

“Drtsyat j grelju yg ztinkruk hureshna Sammael,” the burnt thing announces from the mute’s left while shoving him forward. He stumbles several steps with the momentum of the push and fetches up against another body—this one broad and solid as a tree. He keeps his eyes shut as the thing that is most assuredly _not_ a tree grips his arm.

“Yg? Prahlissi, jes’dgrayv nis?” a new voice asks from somewhere over the mute’s head.

“Quesil gnavi tedruk,” the burnt thing replies. It sounds amused. “U jasi drtsyat eresh ztinkruk nis ptreigissi.”

“Nehdhd,” the not-tree responds with a tone of finality, and the mute finds himself being dragged deeper into the room. He keeps his eyes firmly shut and wills himself to be docile—maybe they won’t hurt him as much if he cooperates. When the not-tree straps him down onto a table, though, he finds that he has to struggle. He isn’t capable of letting them restrain him without putting up at least some token resistance.

The not-tree lets out a husking, bark of a laugh and a moment later the mute’s limbs go numb. Inside his head, he continues to thrash, but his limbs are limp as he is lifted onto the table and strapped facedown into place.

The not-tree keeps the mute limp through everything, but even though he doesn’t move—even though he can’t cry out—that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

He’s branded first: metal searing the dip between his shoulder blades in an unknown design. While his mind is still reeling from the burn, the not-tree starts in with its blades. By the time it turns him over onto his back so that it can get at his front, the mute is lost in a fog of agony. He can’t really feel what’s being done to him anymore—none of the separate slices stand out from the whole—and that blur of pain helps him go further away inside his head. He clings desperately to his special word, grounding himself in it even when the not-tree moves from his body up to his face and starts carving.

Eventually, the cutting stops and the not-tree brings the mute back to himself with a shocking slosh of water. The water washes over his body, slicking the blood clear, and he sputters through split, ruined lips as some of it washes into his open mouth. Another slosh of water leaves him shuddering, every rend in his skin blazing like a star, and his face—oh God, his face feels like it has been cut to ribbons.

 _Sammy,_ he sobs in the red silence of his own mind. _Sammy, please._

The pain doesn’t go away—not even Sammy’s name has enough power to accomplish that trick—but there’s a slight pressure at his lips and then water trickles into him slowly enough that he can drink instead of choke. A heavy hand strokes his drenched hair.

“Hrah,” the not-tree coos while it waters him. “Rekzil frahkna. Sel dgrayvk za ptreig nur Sammael.”

The mute knows better than to trust the kindness in the not-tree’s tone, but he leans into the touch anyway. As his body begins to hydrate, tears leak out from behind his closed eyelids. The mute, hovering on the exhausted edge of sleep, doesn’t notice.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

He dreams again. The field of stones. The man’s silhouette against a jagged, lightning-filled sky.

“You shouldn’t have come,” the silhouette says. “You can’t save me.”

In his dream, the mute steps forward and says, out loud and with his very own voice, “I’m your big brother, dude. I’m always going to save you.”

And the sky overhead opens and weeps bloodied tears that drown the mute and wash the field of stones away.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When he opens his eyes again, the pain is gone. The pain is gone and the not-man is standing over him looking down with no expression whatsoever on his face. There aren’t any screams around them, the mute realizes, and with that first realization comes a second: he isn’t in the torture chamber anymore. Chancing a quick glance past the not-man, the mute sees that he’s in a small, stone room. He’s lying on a pile of hides and furs and there are bowls of water and food by the far wall.

It’s simple and frugal, but it looks the way that the mute thinks paradise would, and hope flutters painfully in his chest. He looks back at the not-man with a tentative smile and, as their eyes meet, the hunger in his chest stirs awake. The not-man feels it as well—that much is obvious from the way his face twitches—but the hunger doesn’t seem to be as pleasurable for him as it is for the mute. There’s disgust on the not-man’s face now, and anger, and when he moves the mute cringes in preparation of a blow.

Instead, the not-man’s hands land on the mute’s thighs and pull them apart.

Their rutting is just as frenzied as it was last time, and leaves the mute just as unfulfilled. He looks at his cock—hard and red and smearing clear, salty liquid on his stomach—as the not-man stands up and puts his own cock away again. At least the mute isn’t being beaten this time. And his ass doesn’t ache as badly as it did before, although the burn wasn’t any less when the not-man first pushed his way inside. His body is learning to adjust to its new role.

When the mute glances up at the not-man’s face to check his mood, the not-man is grimacing. The whirling lines on his skin are jagged and distressed as he runs a hand through his hair. His tail lashes and his wings move in irritated twitches.

Clearly, the mute has done something wrong again, even if he doesn’t know what it is.

He brushes the not-man’s ankle with one hand in submissive apology, but the eyes that fasten on him are anything but forgiving. He shouldn’t have touched without permission. Shouldn’t have reached out, no matter how much the not-man looked like he needed comfort.

The mute’s breath catches as the not-man reaches down and hauls him to his feet. Cock still hard and bobbing between his legs, the mute is dragged out of the room and down a series of corridors. When he hears the first hint of screaming up ahead, he digs his heels in and tries to pull free of the not-man’s grasp—he doesn’t want to go back there, please no—but he’s as helpless to escape from the not-man’s hold as he was from his coffin beneath the rubble.

By the time they reach the torture chamber again, the mute is weeping hard enough that he’s choking on his own snot. His chest hitches with uncontrollable hiccups, jostling the broken necklace he still wears. The mute can’t imagine having to go back on one of those tables—or maybe the real problem is that he can imagine it all too well. When they enter the room, the screaming trails off to weak whimpers and hoarse sobs—the demons have noticed their arrival and paused in their work, granting the meat on the racks a brief respite. The mute’s own hiccupping breaths sound overly loud in the comparative silence.

Then the not-man’s grip shifts on his arm. The mute senses the intent to shove and stops trying to pull free in order to cling instead. If he had a voice he’d be begging—pleas must sound the same in every language, surely the not-man would understand—but words are denied to him. Instead, he does his best to beg with his body, slinging one arm around the not-man’s waist _(the burn scars are smooth beneath his hand, and feverishly warm)_ and gripping one of those smoky wings as he buries his face against the not-man’s shoulder.

The sound the not-man makes is something between a snarl and a growl. Snapping his wing, he shakes the mute’s left hand loose and then slaps him away with a gust of power. The mute tries to keep his feet and can’t—tripping, he skids to a heavy stop on the stone floor. His knees and right forearm are scraped up from the fall, bleeding sluggishly, but that doesn’t matter. After all, there’s going to be a lot more where that came from in a few minutes.

Hoping stupidly for escape, the mute lifts his head and looks around. The not-man is still standing in front of the door and the legs of the _(racks)_ tables form a miniature forest all around him. The mute’s heart lurches as he catches sight of a drain in the middle of the floor—the blood spilled in this room has to go somewhere, otherwise the demons would be wading waist-deep through filth within days—but then he notices the metal grating bolted in place over the opening. Blood may be able to escape through there, but the mute certainly can’t.

For a breathless moment, the world is frozen. Then a broad, muscular demon with goat horns and a mass of scars over one shoulder steps forward and goes down on one knee.

“Miharl Sammael,” it says, and the voice and shape of the demon’s body click together in the mute’s mind and he knows that he’s looking at the not-tree from his last visit to this room. The not-tree begins to rise from its greeting—which part of that utterance named the not-man, the mute doesn’t know—but the not-man’s markings swirl and his eyes flash and power floods the room, stifling.

“Hryt grek hureshnrd eresh,” the not-man snarls, and without looking at the mute extends a hand in his direction.

The mute flinches away from the accusatory finger, expecting pain, but it’s the not-tree that screams. Startled, the mute looks over to see that the demon’s flesh has started to run. It looks like a candle that has been left too close to an open fire.

The scream cuts short as the not-tree begins to babble instead, and the mute was right: pleas sound the same in every language. It isn’t just begging, though—there are too many different sounds in its words for that type of repetition. The mute thinks that it is also offering an explanation, or at least an attempt at one.

Whatever the not-tree is saying, the not-man doesn’t seem impressed. He steps forward and the press of his power surges, crackling through the air like electricity. Mushy clumps of skin start to drop from the not-tree’s bones.

“Oureghi, Sammael!” the demon shrieks. Its voice has gone wet and thick. The mute can see parts of its ribcage now, and the demon’s very bones are rotting: going spongy and sagging. “Oureghi!” the demon tries again, and then there’s a sickening plop and its insides spill out onto the floor. It’s still horribly alive, but beyond speech. Beyond screaming. Its voice has been stolen just as surely as the mute’s.

The not-man—Sammael is his name, the mute is almost sure—extends a hand in the mute’s direction again. Ropes of power follow the gesture, coiling around the mute’s wrists and dragging him near. As soon as the mute is close enough, Sammael reaches out and grips him by the hair and the meaty flesh of his left arm. Growling, the not-man wrenches the mute’s head to one side and thrusts his shoulder close to the dying demon’s face. Through his fear, the mute suddenly he understands what’s going on.

Sammael sent him down here for a purpose. He sent the mute to be branded and cut up and when he came to check on the work, he found the mute healthy. Whole and unscarred. The mute is a little surprised himself by how quickly his body repaired itself this time, but the process itself is nothing new. He’s been cut up and burnt and he’s had the flesh scraped from his bones and every time his body has healed perfectly, leaving him with nothing but the memory of pain.

Maybe that’s why he has so much trouble holding onto the past.

Sammael is upset right now because he doesn’t know that this is how the mute’s body works. He thinks that his orders weren’t followed—that the not-tree disobeyed him. And if the not-tree offered the explanation that the mute thinks it did— _I cut him, I burned him, he was a bloody mess when I put him in his pen_ —then Sammael also thinks that the demon is lying to him. Because there _are_ two scars on the mute’s body—the line bisecting his throat and the handprint on his shoulder: the shiny burn that Sammael is currently thrusting in the not-tree’s face as proof that the mute can be marked.

The not-tree hurt him yesterday—hurt him badly—but if the mute had a voice he would use it to explain. He’d explain not to save the melting demon but to spare himself.

If Sammael thinks that his orders were disobeyed, then he’s going to try again.

How many times will the mute need to be strapped onto the table before the not-man finally realizes that two scars are all that his skin are ever going to hold?

Sammael is spitting words at the demon, hands flexing unconsciously in the mute’s hair and on his arm, but the mute doesn’t bother paying attention. What’s the point if he can’t understand, can’t do anything to save himself? Instead, he hangs limply in Sammael’s grasp while the not-tree finishes its slow, agonizing dissolve into a foul-smelling puddle on the floor, and does his best to burrow into his own mind. Maybe, if he can go away to his safe place before they get started, it will hurt less this time.

It isn’t more than a couple of seconds before Sammael is moving, though: dragging the mute over to an unoccupied table and tossing him on top of it. The mute immediately tries to scramble off the other side—is on his knees and gripping the smooth edge of the table when Sammael’s hand wraps around his neck and pushes him back down.

The mute’s lips smash against the wood and, although it has obviously been wiped down since its last occupant, he tastes blood. The familiar flavor sends his heart racing and he thrashes, fighting Sammael’s grip. He expects a blanket of power to still him or shackles to lock into place around his ankles and wrists, but instead Sammael continues to hold him with one hand and uses the other to pet the mute’s hair. The not-man is speaking, he realizes belatedly—is making hushed, soothing noises as though the mute is a startled animal he needs to calm.

“Feshh,” Sammael whispers, his voice silken. “Feshh, areshna dgrayvk. Eresh yrithahd. Feshh.”

The mute manages to turn his head to one side so that his cheek is resting flat against the wood and rolls his eyes back in an attempt to get a look at the expression on Sammael’s face. He doesn’t understand the words, but the tone—and the stroking caress of the not-man’s hand—imply comfort. They promise safety. The mute is facedown on a table that tastes like blood, which means that he can’t trust the promise even if he finds it mirrored on Sammael’s face. But he still wants—desperately—to believe.

Shifting forward, Sammael bends close and lets the mute get a good look at him. His expression is soft—almost kind. A smile stretches his lips as he continues to coo and stroke the mute’s hair. The not-man’s eyes are as cold as ever, but it’s easy to ignore that. It’s easy to tilt into the caresses and loosen his grip on the edge of the table. Easy to let his own eyes slip shut.

When it comes, the searing agony between his shoulder blades isn’t completely unexpected. The mute jerks, muscles spasming, but Sammael’s crushing hold on the back of his neck keeps him from going anywhere. As the brand presses down more firmly, the scent of cooking flesh comes to the mute and, for the first time in a long time, his bladder lets go and he wets himself. It's only a trickle, but the acidic stench of urine is humiliating, and the knowledge that he made a mess of himself only makes the pain worse.

By the time the brand finally lifts again, the mute’s vision is swimming. He blinks weakly out at the room and finds Sammael’s face filling his vision. The not-man is still smiling.

When he notices the mute looking back at him, the smile goes hard and cold. His wings mantle, revealing his languidly waving tail. The tip of Sammael’s tail is wrapped around a brand that the mute knows was just pressed against his back. The business end of the metal still glows white.

Hypnotized by the glow, the mute tracks the metal with his eyes as the tail dips down and out of sight. He doesn’t notice the absence of Sammael’s hand on his hair until it comes down again on the burnt flesh of his upper back.

The escalation of pain is immediate and agonizing. Opening his mouth in a voiceless scream, the mute writhes against the table in a mindless attempt to get away. Although he manages to get his knees under him again, Sammael’s hold on the mute’s neck keeps his upper body restrained and he’s left struggling futilely as the not-man traces the brand with his fingers. Tears stream from his eyes.

“Areshna,” Sammael purrs, drawing the mute’s pain-glazed eyes back to his face. A blurred movement over the not-man’s shoulder signals his tail’s rise. The dull length of the brand has been replaced with something shorter. Something gleaming.

A scalpel.

Squeezing his eyes shut, the mute tries to assure himself that it can’t be any worse than last time.

He’s wrong.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

“Hey there, big brother.”

The mute blinks, confused. One minute he was being held down and carved up and the next—

“I’m dreaming,” he says, and because this is true he isn’t surprised that his voice works.

He and the shadow figure across from him are sitting at a table by a wall of windows. Across a wide aisle to their right is a long counter lined with stools and, beyond that, a window opening onto another room where the mute can smell food cooking. A whiteboard on the wall by the window reads,

 

Today’s Specials  
Fish and Chips  
Bistro Burger  
Blueberry Pie

 

“No, you’re unconscious,” the figure sitting on the other side of the _(booth)_ table replies.

The mute glances back at his companion and, for a moment, the shadow lifts to reveal a pair of earnest, hazel eyes. Then he blinks and the glimpse is gone.

“Is he killing me?” he asks. There’s no fear in the question. At this point, death would be a mercy.

The figure shakes its head. “You know you can’t die, dude. That boat sailed when you went and played the martyr.” It pauses and then adds, with a hint of reproof, “Again.”

The mute swallows and looks down at his hands, which are clasped on the tabletop. “I’m not gonna scar,” he whispers. “H-he’s gonna—gonna keep c-cutting muh-me.”

“He’s a smart guy,” the figure answers. “He’ll figure it out. Just. Try not to think about it right now. You came here to get away, right?”

When the mute looks up, he’s granted another illuminating flash—generous mouth stretched in a wide, easy-going smile—and the sight leaves his chest warm in a way that feels as strange as it does familiar.

“Do I—do I know you?” he asks.

The smile falters as it dissolves back into shadow. “You used to.”

The mute flushes with shame. His mouth trembles and tears spill from his eyes. “I—I’m sorry, I tried to—I _tried_ to remember, I—”

“Shh,” the figure soothes. “Hey, shh, man. You remembered my name. You did good.”

The mute’s breath catches at that and he peers more intently at the figure, trying to pierce the shadows. “Sammy?”

“Yahtzee,” Sammy answers. “You remember that? You used to say it all the time back when—” He stops short, and the mute imagines that generous mouth pursing in a grimace. Then, in a subdued tone, he finishes, “Before.”

“Before what?” the mute whispers.

“Hey, you tell me. We’re in your head.”

The mute tries, straining his mind to remember something— _anything_ —that might explain the divide in his memories. Those few, scattered shards of warmth from Before. The blood-soaked, darkened flood of After.

As hard as he tries, though, there’s nothing. Only a few, disjointed snatches of that field of stones, and the figure there, and a sky on fire. Only the endless, hollow warrens where his past used to be.

“I can’t remember,” he admits finally, dropping his head forward. Sammy leans over the table and a warm weight cups the back of the mute’s neck. Sammy’s fingers squeeze lightly, comforting.

“That’s okay, it isn’t really important right now. Right now you need to focus on keeping yourself safe until he comes to get you.”

Blindly, the mute reaches up to grip Sammy’s wrist as Sammy plays with the soft fringe of his hair—which isn’t matted here, isn’t filthy with sweat and dirt and blood. The contact feels good, even if it is in his head.

“Until you come?” he asks. “The real Sammy?”

The fingers in his hair still. For a long moment, Sammy doesn’t respond. Then, quietly and reluctantly, he says, “I’m not coming.”

The mute’s chest didn’t hurt this badly when Sammael was cutting it open. Squeezing his eyes shut, he grips Sammy’s wrist more tightly. As though he can keep him here. As though he can make him be real, can make him take the hurtful words back.

“No. You _have_ to come. You—”

“I would if I could, you know that, but there’s just. You couldn’t save me, and now I can’t save you.” Sammy’s hand moves again, stroking over his hair in a gentle caress. “You should have gone with them when you had the chance. You should have left me here alone. It’s what I deserved.”

“No,” the mute insists. He lifts his head—not all the way, not enough to dislodge Sammy’s hand, just enough so that he can look at Sammy’s shadowed, hidden face. This time, Sammy’s hair comes into focus: shaggy and brown and soft looking. The mute wants to touch it, reaches out to do so, and Sammy draws away with a sigh.

“Don’t go,” the mute begs, grabbing after the shadow of a retreating hand. “Please.”

“I can’t stay here. _You_ can’t stay here.” Sammy’s head tilts. “You can’t stay _there_ either. Promise me you’ll go with him when he comes for you. You won’t do that stupid, noble thing you always do?”

Who is ‘he’, the mute could ask, but that doesn’t matter. Instead, he says, “Will he take me to you?”

Although Sammy doesn’t say anything, the sad, regretful way he reaches out again to lay his hand against the side of the mute’s face answers the question anyway. For a moment the mute can’t speak, and he’s halfway to panicking before he realizes that it’s just because there’s a lump in his throat. With a grimace of concentration, he swallows and then chokes out, “It’s not fair.”

“No,” Sammy agrees. “It isn’t.”

“I lost _everything,_ ” the mute continues bitterly. “I—I lost my own name remembering yours and now you’re telling me I can’t—that I won’t ever—”

“I’m sorry,” Sammy breathes.

The mute is drowning in sorrow, he’s buried in loss, and it’s too intense—too much. He flounders around inside of himself and clings to the cheated shreds of resentment that he finds. “At least—if you aren’t coming then I want. I want my own name back.”

Sammy’s hand trails away from his cheek, like smoke. “I’d trade if I could, dude, but I’m not real, remember? Just a figment of your imagination. I don’t remember your name any more than you do.”

This particular figment has begun to go hazy around the edges, slipping away. The scent of food coming from the other room has soured with the coppery tang of blood. The very air has darkened, as though a cloud passed over the nonexistent sun. When the mute glances over, the specials menu has changed. Now it reads,

 

Today’s Specials  
Branding  
Flaying  
Vivisection

A pit of ice pools in his stomach and he whimpers, “I don’t want to go back.”

“You have to, dude,” Sammy insists. “Just remember what I said. And one other thing.”

When the mute looks back at Sammy’s figure, he immediately gasps and shrinks back against the seat with his heart wedged in his throat. He’s trembling, deep inside where it doesn’t show, as he meets the illuminated gaze of the figure across from him. But Sammy’s eyes aren’t hazel this time. They’re gold.

“You do know that Sammael is Demonic for Samuel, right?”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

The mute wakes up trembling. There’s pain this time, but it isn’t too bad, and he can feel his skin knitting together with each pump of his heart.

“Eresh dgrayvk rill?”

The mute sits up at the sound of that voice, eyes darting around the room—he’s back in what he guesses is supposed to be his pen, back on the piles of furs—in search of the speaker. He finds Sammael sitting across from him, knees up and feet flat on the floor. His hands dangle between his thighs and his wings are unfolded in an awkward spread to create room for his back to rest against the wall. His tail, snaking out along the floor, twitches like a lazy cat’s. Across his chest and face, in direct contrast to the apparent ease of his body, lines of vivid red coil and snap. The blank space created by his scars seems more obvious in contrast, the afterimage of pain.

Moving with slow caution, the mute mirrors Sammael’s position but hugs his knees to his chest. His torso twitches involuntarily with the shivery sensation of a cut low along his ribs sealing shut. The mute leans back against the wall and studies the not-man, trying to see Sammy there. It’s difficult when his only memories are fragments _(line of a jaw, curve of a lip, shaggy fall of bangs)_ that he can’t piece together into a whole.

The hair _might_ fit, if it were a little shorter—he doesn’t think his Sammy’s hair ever actually reached his shoulders—but the mouth is all wrong. It’s too cruel, even relaxed as it is now. Sammy’s eyes were hazel, not gold, and he didn’t have wings. Or a tail.

Most importantly, though, Sammael doesn’t _feel_ like Sammy in the mute’s head. He doesn’t set off Sammy’s warm glow in the mute’s chest.

 _It isn’t him,_ the mute thinks, tightening his grip on his legs. _It was just a bad dream. Sammy’s coming. He is._

But there’s a hollow, cold core to him that was never there before, and when he thinks his special word to himself, it echoes dully through the hollow places in his mind.

“Eresh hureshnt grakesh,” Sammael comments in a flat voice. “Qlit grek dgrayvuk nasthurg.”

The flaps of the mute’s cheek reaffix themselves and then seal together, seamless. It tickles a little and he unconsciously rubs the freshly healed skin against the back of his knee. Across from him, there’s an indecipherable flicker in Sammael’s eyes.

“Fehyrhd yasr eresh hureshnrd,” Sammael says.

With nothing but a few light scratches left to heal, the mute isn’t in pain anymore. He feels almost good now— _would_ feel good if Sammael weren’t still staring at him. If the weight of the not-man’s eyes weren’t stirring the ravenous hunger in the mute’s chest.

On the other side of the mute’s pen, Sammael’s jaw twitches and the mute knows that the not-man is feeling the tug as well. The whirl of lines on Sammael’s skin speeds as his tail lashes, thumping against both wall and floor. As the mute’s cock hardens, he tugs his legs closer and traps it against his stomach.

As though that will stop this from happening.

Not that he doesn’t enjoy the pleasure that his coupling with Sammael brings him; a part of the mute is actually starting to crave the hot press of the not-man’s cock filling him up. But he remembers the pain of denial too well, and so he dreads the pleasure just as much as he yearns for it. He loathes how it sharpens those horrible, unfulfilled moments after the not-man withdraws into something approaching agony.

And Sammael is always angrier after.

When the not-man stands up, though, the shudder that wracks the mute’s body isn’t born entirely of fear. Dropping his eyes, he releases his knees and eases his legs apart, displaying himself. Sammael’s breath catches audibly in the quiet room and the mute can feel the not-man’s attention fastened low between his parted thighs. The mute’s pulse speeds as he body opens, loosening for what is coming. His cock has begun to dribble fluid onto the flat lines of his stomach.

Sammael takes a single, begrudging step forward and then stops. When the mute chances a glance, the not-man’s wings are shaking minutely. His markings are swirling so rapidly that his unscarred skin has taken on a uniform, red color. For an agonizing, endless moment, Sammael stands there with hunger and disgust chasing each other across his face like shadows chase the sun. Then his expression hardens into rage.

“Jescha!” he snarls, turning away and moving for the door with rapid strides.

The mute is too shocked by the not-man’s obvious refusal to move at first, and by the time he has started to reach out in supplication, the door to his pen is already slamming shut. Cock still full and aching, the mute watches the door and waits for Sammael to return. He doesn’t even consider the possibility that the not-man might not come back, because the hunger pulsing through him—the hunger they share—is too strong to resist. It’s starting to hurt, actually, starting to feel like being burned from the inside out, and the mute can’t take it for much longer.

But the door remains shut, and after a while the mute feels the connection between them stretching out and going thin. There’s no danger of it snapping—there isn’t enough distance in the world for that—but he can taste Sammael’s intent in the thinning.

The not-man isn’t coming back.

 _He has to,_ the mute thinks to himself as he presses a shaking hand against his dripping cock. _He will, I know he will._

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When the door finally opens again, it isn’t Sammael.

The mute is too dazed by the force of his arousal to fight as he’s lifted and carried back down to the torture chamber. When they begin, it’s a toss up as to which hurts more—the punishment the demons are offering his body or the continual burn of the hunger inside of him.

The demons open him up, exposing stomach and entrails to the stinging air. They peel the skin from the mute’s left arm as though it’s a glove. They cut out strips of flesh and fill the gaps with molten metal. They chop off four of the fingers on the mute’s right hand, leaving him with nothing but a stump and a thumb. They dissolve his left leg from the knee down with a viscous acid.

The hole in his stomach seals closed. The skin on his arm grows back. As his flesh mends, it pushes the metal out in heavy bars that echo when they clatter to the floor. Four bumps rise from the stump of his right hand and stretch out to reform his sundered fingers. When his knee begins to sprout a protrusion of its own, it isn’t difficult to figure out what’s going to happen.

The mute is delirious for most of it, lost in the field of stones and a pair of pitiless golden eyes and the illusory sting of a knife across his throat. The sting is more disturbing than anything else—it should be lost amidst the other, stronger snarls of agony, and somehow isn’t. Worse, it carries with it a certain taint, like the edge of memory.

This is one piece of his past that he’s sure he doesn’t want to recover.

The burning hunger inside of the mute eases slightly during the worst of the damage—isn’t strong enough to keep his cock firm while he’s being mutilated—but after, when they leave him chained to the table and his body begins to rebuild itself, it swells again. Being filled with that burn is like dying of thirst while a desert is poured down his throat. Like being pinned at the bottom of the ocean while trying to take a breath.

As the rate of the mute’s healing slows, the hunger intensifies until he’s certain that his body has turned to ash inside. His cock has become nothing but throbbing agony, and he would beg the demons to cut it off if he had the voice. The pain of castration would be a welcome respite.

If he is left like this much longer, his mind is going to break from the strain. Already, the hollow places inside of him are expanding as more of his past is burnt away. If the mute’s dream is to be believed, then his Sammy is lost to him as well, but he continues to cling to his special word anyway. He doesn’t know how to do anything else.

That name—that prayer—will be the last thing he gives up, the very last.

And then, shockingly, there are hands on him. The chains melt from around his wrists and ankle and he is yanked down to the bottom of the table. His back bows, muscles spasming, as a thick cock impales him. The mute is too dazed to see clearly, but he doesn’t need to see the not-man to know whose hands are on him or whose cock is filling him up.

Sammael has returned—the mute can feel his arrival echoed in the strength of their connection, which runs the mute’s body like a system of roots. With each thrust, the roots shoot deeper. With each withdrawal, they pull painfully tight.

As the not-man’s pace speeds, the mute reaches out with his free hand, blindly searching. He’s too weak to sit up on his own, but coils of power grip him and lift him up against Sammael’s chest. Strong arms close around the mute; one hand grips his matted hair while another cups his ass and jerks him firmly into each thrust.

A low growl is the mute’s only warning before teeth sink into his collarbone and dig in deeply enough to draw blood. It’s a minor wound, and the skin there knits together as soon as it’s released. Sammael lets out a roar and bites down again, and again, and again. He’s snarling between bites, the same thing over and over again: “Areshna. Ysath areshna, eresh hureshnhd, areshna dgrayvk.”

The last, lingering hurts from the mute’s third visit to the rack vanish at a bewildering rate as he’s fucked. When he curls his hand tentatively around Sammael’s bicep, his fingers are no longer spongy with growth. When he hooks his legs around Sammael’s waist, if one leg is still mostly skinless then at least he has two ankles again to lock his legs in place.

 _Yes,_ he thinks, mindless enough with both need and pleasure that he dares to set his own mouth to Sammael’s shoulder. Sammael’s skin tastes like sulfur, tastes golden, and a tiny corner of the mute’s brain locks up in shock with the realization that the spell that kept him from being crushed was of the not-man’s making.

Then, with a jerk of his shoulder, Sammael shakes the mute’s mouth free and shoves him back down onto the table. The impact jars the breath from the mute’s body and it takes him several, coughing gasps to get his lungs working again. Any other time, the struggle for air would panic him, but right now he’s too busy mourning the loss of contact—although, really, he doesn’t care what position he’s in as long as Sammael keeps thrusting.

As he sucks in his first, deep breath, the mute arches, tilting his ass up. Sammael’s next thrust scrapes in at a different angle and sets off that sparking light inside of him. In response, the mute pants out in a breathy, voiceless whine and flexes his feet— _feet_ , there are two again, he’s all but healed and he feels ... fuck, feels so good.

There’s nothing better than this, than the drag of the not-man’s cock inside of him and the press of the not-man’s hand low on the mute’s stomach, holding him down. Nothing lovelier than the smooth slide of Sammael’s skin against the mute’s inner thigh on one side, than the rougher scrape of the not-man’s burn scars on the other. There is no pleasure greater than this—than being taken and owned and cared for—the mute is sure of it.

Then Sammael’s other hand clamps down on the mute's leaking cock and he’s wrong. He’s wrong and so very glad for it.

The mute writhes as Sammael strokes him, and if the not-man’s grip is a little too rough, then it isn’t too high a price to pay for the building tension, which is closer to cresting than it ever has been before. Sammael keeps striking that explosive place inside of him while he moves his hand up and down on the mute’s cock, and as the last bit of skin reforms on the mute’s heel, his entire body tenses with agonizing, perfect pleasure. More of that white, salty fluid spurts from his cock, leaving the air sharp with the scent of sex.

“Areshna,” Sammael grunts with an edge of satisfaction, and speeds his thrusts.

The mute lies there languidly while Sammael finishes. The burning hunger has curled into him again, sated, and he’s too exhausted by his release to manage even a slight wince as Sammael pulls out. The burn of their coupling fades almost immediately, but the slick, open sensation remains, deeper and more intrusive than it was before. It’s an odd feeling, but as the mute clenches his ass and then relaxes it again, he decides that it isn’t actually unpleasant.

He’s still breathing hard—they both are, Sammael’s chest rising and falling heavily as he looks down at the mute’s newly formed leg. Then Sammael’s eyes rise to the mute’s and he rasps, “Selyrtrk.”

The mute blinks and the not-man’s face is inches from his own. Sammael is bracing himself on the table with one hand. His hair frames his face and sweeps against the mute’s upturned lips as he tilts his head and takes a slow, measured breath by the corner of the mute’s jaw. Scenting him.

It’s like being smelled by a wild beast and the mute holds himself still, fear returning as the aftershocks of pleasure fade. Slowly, and still breathing in the warmth from the mute’s skin, Sammael shifts lower. He hovers over the mute’s chest, which is flecked with blood from the not-man’s bites, and then darts his tongue out to trace along the mute’s collarbone. When he raises his head again, his forehead is creased with confusion.

“Jescha, jes’selyrtrk. Evn grakesh dgrayv—nfres cvrasyn. Ufegirdel, eresh jes’dgrayrd? Qait rihtk nedril hfrunt gemna li’eresh ne eresh ufegirt rhasa.” Deliberately, Sammael places his hand over the handprint on the mute’s shoulder. “Yg eresh valekig? Dgraykig qaitr’ras eresh hureshnig?”

The mute blinks up at the not-man, uncomprehending. After a moment, Sammael frowns and takes his hand back. When he speaks again, his voice carries a chill.

“Jes’dgrayrd jescha. Dtrayuld hgrashi ztinkrud eresh, mre jes’trakaun aresh. Aresh crihauk jeshil.”

Turning away from the mute, he snaps a sharp command at the watching demons and then, wings twitching irritably, strides away.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

The demons put him back in his pen.

For several days, the mute expects to be returned to the torture chamber every time his door opens, but his visitor is never anything more sinister than one of the demons’ half-human slaves coming to refresh his food and water. On the third day, when he finally realizes that he isn’t going back on the rack, he shames himself by crying again.

The mute didn’t know that relief could make him cry—didn’t know the emotion could feel so huge and sharp in his chest. When the feeling finally subsides, he’s headachy and tired. Wiping his nose on one arm, he lies down in his pile of hides and settles in to wait.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

By the mute’s count _(one feeding a day is what he’s figuring, that seems reasonable)_ , he has been confined to his pen for just under two weeks when the hunger begins to stir. At first, he isn’t certain what’s happening—isn’t used to feeling like this without Sammael in the room to ignite the need. An hour later, though, with his cock hard and throbbing between his legs, it’s clear that the connection between them has grown strong enough that the not-man’s actual presence is no longer required to begin the process.

The mute hopes that Sammael can feel it as well, and that the not-man isn’t too busy to take care of the hunger swiftly. He lies so that he can see the door, legs spread and ready.

This time, the not-man stays away for three weeks.

By the end of the first week, the mute has stopped bothering with his food and water dishes. He spends his time lying on his side with his forehead pressed against the wall, hugging one of the furs close while he does his best to mimic the not-man’s grip on his aching cock. By the end of the second week, his forearm is trembling with exhaustion, the flesh on his cock is constantly bruised from his fumbling attempts for release, and he’s no closer to fulfilling that need than he was when it started. As much as he’s capable of understanding anything anymore, the mute has begun to understand that he isn’t going to be able to sate the hunger on his own.

When the door blows in off its hinges at the end of the third week, the mute is too far-gone to notice. He feels the strong hands that close on his waist, though—feels himself dragged from his nest of furs. Sammael is inside him before he knows what’s happening, already moving before something thin and whip-like _(no, not a whip, it’s a tail, Sammael’s clever tail)_ slaps his hand away from his cock and replaces his grip with its own. Sammael thrusts twice, tail coiling around the mute’s cock in a stroking undulation, and the mute grays out.

The not-man is still fucking him when he comes back to himself, hands traveling all over the mute’s body and mouth working at the nape of his neck. Sammael’s tail continues to work the mute’s cock, squeezing him and spreading the wetness of his release around and making him pant noiselessly. From the slick way that the not-man’s cock is gliding through him, Sammael has already climaxed as well, but he feels as hard and desperate as ever and the hunger is strong and panting between them.

When they finally collapse in a limp heap several hours later, the mute has been fucked in every conceivable position—and in some that he could never have imagined. He has taken Sammael’s cock and his hand and even his tail—more than one at a time towards the end. Now he and Sammael are both covered in sweat and other, stickier fluids, and there are bloody streaks on the mute’s chest and back where the not-man’s teeth and nails found their mark.

With a weary groan, Sammael rests his forehead between the mute’s shoulder blades and carefully eases the tip of his tail from the mute’s sloppy hole. The mute bites his lower lip in a silent wince and spreads his legs further as Sammael’s cock follows, dropping free to flop against the mute’s inner thigh. This time, the soreness inside of him lingers. Punishment for holding off for so long, maybe.

They lie there for a long moment, catching their breaths, and then Sammael mutters something that the mute doesn’t need to understand in order to recognize as a curse and pushes himself up. Shutting his eyes, the mute waits for the yelling to begin. He waits for the not-man to begin striking him. And waits. And waits.

And sleeps.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

He doesn’t notice himself drifting off, so it’s a surprise when he finds himself back in the field of stones.

“You shouldn’t have come,” the figure before him says, and although his face is no clearer than before, the voice is beloved and familiar. “You can’t save me.”

 _Sammy,_ the mute wants to say, but instead he hears himself respond, “I’m your big brother, dude. I’m always going to save you.”

Sammy throws his head back and laughs and the sound is all wrong: cruel and verging on hysterical. “And how’re you gonna do that, huh? You gonna turn back the clock? You gonna spill all of my polluted, filthy blood on the ground?”

“Sammy,” the mute says now, and the name sounds as perfect aloud as he always thought it would. His trembling, choked voice doesn’t do it justice.

Between one blink and the next, the figure silhouetted against the sky is gone. _No,_ the mute corrects as a hand grips his throat from behind and he’s pulled back against a broad chest, _not gone: moved._

“You’d have to catch me first, big brother,” Sammy whispers, breath hot on the mute’s ear. “I’m faster than you.” His hand tightens up, cutting off the mute’s air. “Stronger.”

“You aren’t gonna hurt me,” the mute says, although the quaking of his heart suggests he isn’t all that sure.

Sammy chuckles, dark and rich as chocolate. “You have no idea what I want to do to you,” he purrs, and the mute jerks awake to an alarming crash.

Heart stuttering in his chest, he sits up in time to see Sammael lift the metal door again and hurl it into the opposite wall. This time, the violence of the impact is strong enough to send the door right through the stone in a spray of shards. Dust clouds up as well, horribly reminiscent of a collapsing building, and the mute ignores the burn in his ass to scramble up and crawl into the corner. There, he makes himself as small as possible while the not-man sends whips of power through the walls and ceiling.

He thought Sammael was furious before, but that anger was nothing compared to the rage pouring out of him now. Sammael’s tail snakes and lashes restlessly. His wings, thrown wide, crackle with black electricity. On his skin, lines that are normally in flux have frozen in a dangerous, violent pattern of symbols. As the mute watches, Sammael throws his head back and screams—no words, no language, just fury. Overhead, the ceiling has begun to melt.

The scream cuts off abruptly and Sammael drops his head forward, chin on his chest and shaggy hair hanging around his face in a shroud. His wings droop. His tail stills. The symbols on his skin slowly thaw and begin to shift again. Too terrified to even begin trying to figure out if this means that the storm is over, the mute holds his breath until he can’t anymore and then takes a single, shaky gulp of air.

Sammael’s head twists around at the sound and those gold eyes pierce the mute where he huddles. It takes the mute a couple of seconds to realize that there’s no anger in that gaze. There’s the usual disgust, and something that looks like annoyance, but mostly the mute thinks that Sammael looks resigned. His pulse slows as the not-man continues to look at him, until he’s as close to calm as he’s going to get. Tentatively, he straightens.

One corner of Sammael’s mouth twitches at the movement and he lifts a hand in an imperious, commanding gesture. “Trethni,” he says.

 _Come._

With dust powdering his hair and skin and the soft quake of hope in his chest, the mute obeys.


	4. Chapter 4

There’s no more resisting.

When the mute feels the unfolding heat in his chest, he has moments at most before Sammael pushes him up against a convenient wall, or bends him over a chair, or just knocks him to the floor and sates both of their hungers. Once the mute adjusts to having his needs met so quickly, he surprises himself by realizing that he has preferences.

He prefers stone surfaces to wood because stone is cooler and provides a much-needed balance to the furnace of Sammael’s body. He prefers Sammael’s tail on his cock to his hand because Sammael sometimes—not often, but sometimes—gets carried away and grips too hard. It isn’t a mistake his slender tail ever makes.

Most of all, though, the mute prefers being mounted from behind. That way he doesn’t have to see the disgust on Sammael’s face while his new keeper fucks him. Doesn’t have to be reminded just how ugly and worthless he is, just how much Sammael hates having to touch him like this.

The hunger comes more often now that they are constantly together—the not-man has kept the mute close since taking him from his pen and becomes irritable and snappish if the mute wanders more than half a room’s width from his side. At first, it comes once a week, and then twice a week, and then once a day. For a time, the mute wonders fearfully whether the frequency will continue to increase until he’s constantly aflame, until there’s nothing but their frantic coupling. But when the hunger has Sammael thrusting into him morning, midday and night, the progression stops and steadies.

The connection between them settles then as well, tight as it is going to get and twined inexorably around both the mute’s cock and heart. He hasn’t been given a chance to test his suspicion, since Sammael refuses to let the mute out of his sight, but the mute thinks that no matter where he is, he would be able to point in the not-man’s direction. The not-man, he is equally sure, would be able to find him the same way.

The strength of the link is both terrifying and comforting.

On the one hand, Caliban never had such a tight leash on him. For all he had the mute trapped in the basement like a caged rat, there was always the chance that the mute could escape, and flee, and hide. If the mute ever tried to run from this castle—if he managed to creep away while Sammael slept—the not-man would be able to find him unerringly within an hour.

But.

But the mute has never had such security before. He has never been so confident that he will be fed, and watered, and protected. With Sammael, he goes days without being hurt—weeks sometimes, if he can manage to stay out of his keeper’s direct line of sight between couplings. And the mute has become good at being unobtrusive.

He eats crouched at Sammael’s feet. He sleeps on the floor by Sammael’s bed. He walks just a little behind and to the left of his keeper through the halls. When Sammael entertains his followers in the grand hall, he sits in the shadows by the stairs—close enough if the hunger comes early, but far enough away to be out of mind.

He’s playing this careful balancing game on the night the demons bring something scrawny and blonde-haired into the center of their circle. The mute’s head comes up at her pleading cries and, when he sees her, his stomach shifts uncomfortably. He was in her place once, although lucky enough to have caught Sammael’s eye and been granted a reprieve.

There will be no reprieve granted tonight.

The blonde _(a woman, she’s a woman, and as close to human as anything is these days)_ is stripped to reveal stumpy, fluttering wings and a whipcord, scarred body. A collar is fastened around her throat and chained to the floor and then, as the cacophonous laughter of the demons rings her on all sides, a squat, scaled demon steps into the circle trailing a whip. It cracks the whip once in the air beside her face, making her cry out in fear and pull at the chain, and the demons’ laughter swells.

The next crack of the whip isn’t nearly as harmless.

Wrapping his arms around his chest, the mute shifts his gaze to Sammael and finds his keeper lounging back in an oversized chair with one leg tossed nonchalantly over the arm. Sammael is sipping black liquid from a glass and smiling. The mute looks at his keeper, at Sammael’s obvious enjoyment of the spectacle, and all he feels is relief that it isn’t him in the center of the circle.

Then the woman lets out a particularly piercing shriek and he comes back to himself with a guilty lurch. He’s—this is wrong, what he’s feeling. What he’s becoming. The mute has bowed to his keepers’ demands before, he has done what was necessary to spare himself pain, but he has never felt such relief at another’s suffering. It feels like he has lost some part of himself that he never even knew was there, and that feeling panics him.

The mute isn’t thinking of anything but solitude when he gets up and hurries for the nearest hall—he needs to calm himself down, needs to hunt through the hollow spaces in his mind and see if he can relocate his missing heart. He hasn’t taken more than a couple of steps before he fetches up against a solid wall of power. Unthinking, he pushes against the wall, trying to shove his way through it and out the other side where the hallway waits with its promise of calm.

It takes him a moment to realize that the room has gone quiet behind him: a steady silence broken only by the woman’s sobs. The flesh on the back of the mute’s neck crawls as he glances over his shoulder.

Sammael is twisted around in his chair and watching the mute. The other demons are also looking on, but it’s Sammael who matters, Sammael whose tail is lashing and whose mouth is tightening in an alarming way.

“Trethni,” Sammael says—one of the words with which the mute has become more than familiar over the past few weeks. It means heel, it means come, it means _obey_.

The mute doesn’t move.

Sammael’s nostrils flare subtly and his jaw twitches. "Trethni,” he repeats, and this time there is power behind the command, inescapable.

The mute’s legs move without his permission, depositing him beside his keeper’s chair in seconds. Reaching out, Sammael grips the mute’s hair and draws him forward. Although unspoken, this command is just as clear as the first and, wincing, the mute climbs into the not-man’s lap. Sammael uses his grip on the mute’s hair to maneuver him until he’s sitting with his back against Sammael’s chest and then shifts his hand to the mute’s throat.

“Areshna dgrayvk nfra’ri hureshna areshna jes’dgrayvk eresh.” Sammael’s voice growls over the mute’s skin with a possessive edge that shudders through his bones, making him squirm lightly. “Eresh ral skrivan girlhd.”

For several heartbeats, the mute has the vague, confused idea that Sammael is going to mount him right here, in front of his followers and with no urging push from the hunger at all. Then the slow, moist breaths that were curling against the mute’s throat shift away as his keeper returns his attention to the waiting demons.

“Crivni,” Sammael says, voice ringing with authority, and the scaled demon raises its whip.

The mute shuts his eyes before the lash falls, but the woman’s despairing scream paints a clear enough picture in his head. He listens to three more strikes and then Sammael’s grip tightens, choking him.

“Ladrisni,” Sammael hisses in the mute’s ear. “Eresh ztinkrun ladrisna.”

The mute hasn’t learned this command yet, but it isn’t difficult to understand why Sammael is upset with him. He was positioned in his keeper’s lap facing this way for a reason. Sure enough, the not-man’s hold eases once the mute eases his eyes open again and looks at the spectacle before him.

The woman’s back is already a bloodied, raw mess, and gobs of flesh are flying off with every fresh lick of the whip. The copper tang of blood hangs heavy in the air and drives the hounds by the fire into a frenzy; trembling and whining with eagerness, they pace in tight lines while staring at the woman with slavering jaws. As the next lash falls, the woman jerks and casts her eyes up in desperate appeal. Her gaze locks with the mute’s and something stirs deep inside of him—something he thought lost only minutes before.

A sudden swell of emotion—something he has no name for, but which is kin to pity—lights up the hollow places in his mind and tightens his chest. It’s just as strong as the hunger and more painful by far, and the mute’s eyes sting. Almost immediately, his vision blurs with tears, but not before he loses the woman’s gaze—she bows forward under the next lash to press her forehead to the floor in agonized supplication.

He loses count of the lashes after that.

This isn’t among the most horrifying moments in the mute’s life, but it is among the most difficult. He isn’t used to sitting by while someone else is harmed—can’t remember anything different, no, but the anxious itch in his skin tells him that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Watching is twisting him up inside, deep where it doesn’t show, and he longs to run forward and catch the lash before it can descend. Or, failing that, to lay his body over hers and take the blows himself. He’d try to take her place if he thought there was any chance he would be permitted.

But Sammael obviously has another use for him right now—his keeper is thrusting up against him in subtle pulses while his thumb rubs slow circles against the pulse point in the mute’s throat. If the mute struggles, Sammael will just hold him in place with his power and punish him for his disobedience later. And the woman will be just as dead.

So the mute sits and watches through his tears as the flesh is whipped from the woman’s body. He’s docile when the not-man turns his face into the mute’s neck and begins to bite a collar of bruises into his skin. Like a good pet, he does what his keeper wants and absorbs the lesson.

This show is exciting to Sammael, and the not-man wants the mute to know it. He wants the mute to understand how very, very dangerous he is. How very cruel.

The bruises from Sammael’s mouth fade within moments, but the lesson lingers.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Most of the time, it isn’t difficult to remember what his new keeper is. Sammael offers evidence of his own nature with a thousand casual cruelties each day. And enough of those cruelties are directed toward the mute to leave a lasting impression.

But things are different in the tower.

The tower is a round room, high up in the castle. It has a single window by Sammael’s high-backed chair and the rest of the curving wall is covered from floor to ceiling with shelves. The shelves, in turn, hold row after row of books. The entire collection is a treasure trove of knowledge for which Caliban would eagerly have sold the mute, useful as he was—the mage possessed only two books, and they were pitiful, flaking things with broken bindings. The bindings on Sammael’s collection are well oiled. The pages are smooth and turn easily.

At least once a day, Sammael leads them both up the stairs to this room and stretches himself out amidst the piles of books on the floor—there isn’t enough room on the shelves for everything, an excess that the mute has trouble comprehending. Then the not-man always takes out some parchment _(white and clean)_ , a sharpened quill and a black bottle of ink, and picks up where he left off—making notations on both the parchment and in the margins of whatever book he’s currently reading. He writes with the quill held tightly in his tail—one arm propping him up and the other turning the page when necessary. His wings fan out behind him, moving lazily as he reads.

In this room, Sammael is different. He seems distracted by the wealth of information surrounding him, and that distraction softens his usual malice. Sometimes, when he smiles here, the quirk of Sammael’s lips almost reminds the mute of his Sammy dream.

Dreams of all sorts are close in this room—the waking as well as the sleeping kind. In the drowsy, amber quality of the tower’s light, the mute finds it easy to summon his imagination, and sometimes while he watches Sammael make notations in a leather bound volume, he imagines that his keeper’s eyes are hazel. Imagines that those wings are a trick of the light, that it’s a hand holding the quill and not a tail.

In the mute’s daydreams, the mute can speak.

“Sammy,” he says, and his keeper glances over at him and smiles, and the smile is kind.

In the tower, the mute dares to dream himself free from Hell.

Daydreaming is dangerous, though, and little more than a month after his lesson in the great hall, the mute blinks free from his imaginings to find that he has crept closer to his keeper—close enough to touch. He blinks a second time, startled, when he realizes that Sammael is chewing on the end of his quill while his tail rubs absently up and down the mute’s arm. The caress makes the mute’s chest ache in strange ways, and he leans into the touch, letting the not-man’s tail wrap more firmly around his bicep.

When Sammael realizes what he’s doing half an hour later, his rage is terrifying. He kicks the mute out the door and down the flight of stairs leading up to the room while yelling what must be curses at the top of his lungs. That evening, when the hunger comes Sammael ignores the mute’s needs for the first time since he took him from his pen, leaving him hard and panting on the floor.

After that, the mute is careful to stay well away from his keeper when they go up to the tower, and he keeps his dreams in the night where they belong.

He _does_ dream, though, and dreams often. Every night, it seems that he has but to close his eyes and he will be there, in the field of stones beneath a lightning-lit sky. Sammy’s figure is always before him, always indistinct, always out of reach. And he wakes with scratchy eyes and the taste of salt on his lips and his special word echoing through the hollow labyrinths within him.

 _Sam. Sammy. Sam._

 _Please._

But even in his own mind, there’s never any answer.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

The mute’s arms shake where they’re propping him up. Hanging his head, he touches his nose to the back of his wrist and makes his breathy, voiceless whimper as Sammael’s hips slam one last time against his and then still. Sated, the hunger settles and leaves the mute on his own to deal with the mess he made on the tower floor, with the mess Sammael left inside him.

Sammael pulls out before he’s completely finished and the last few spurts land on the back of the mute’s parted thighs. He flinches—more at his keeper’s angry grumbling than the thick streaks. Sammael doesn’t ever seem to like succumbing to the hunger, but he hates it more than usual up here, in this place that the mute thinks might be a sanctuary for the not-man as well as himself.

At least they managed not to ruin any of the books with their frenzied coupling—the mute is sure he would receive worse than a beating for that fault.

A cloth hits his side and falls to the floor.

“Nis nhrevni,” Sammael says. When the mute glances over at his keeper, the not-man is already settling back into his place, tail retrieving the quill that was dropped when the hunger came. The mute has been dismissed, duty fulfilled. At least Sammael gave him release this time.

Picking up the cloth, he uses it to mop up the floor first—the wood is much more important than him, more valuable—and then cleans off his stomach and cock. Finally, twisting around, he wipes his keeper’s release from his thighs and daubs lightly at his hole, which is grudgingly closing. With another reflexive glance at the not-man, the mute crawls as far away as he dares and sits down, sullied cloth held in one hand. He’ll put it with the rest of Sammael’s dirty things when they return to the room.

Staring down at the floor, the mute plays with the chain around his neck and waits for Sammael to finish. Stupid as he is, though, he isn’t immune to boredom and eventually he lifts his head enough to watch his keeper. Sammael’s expression is rapt as he reads. The quill almost seems to fly over the parchment without any assistance from his tail—certainly he isn’t looking at what he’s writing down. His wings furl and unfurl absently behind him, brushing against nearby stacks of books. The drift of the lines on his skin is almost as hypnotic as the butterflies’ dance in that long distant glade, but it isn’t the lines that draw the mute’s attention. It’s the burn scars.

The mute looks at those shiny streaks of ruined flesh along Sammael’s side and flank and wonders what could have been strong enough to have hurt his keeper that badly. Or maybe the not-man did that to himself. The mute has been here long enough now to understand that scars are a mark of great beauty among the demons. It makes sense, he supposes—scars represent suffering, and pain is little more than an aphrodisiac to them.

He’s still staring at the burn scars, wondering, when Sammael sweeps his left wing forward and accidentally knocks a pile of books over. The books fall in a clatter that makes the not-man jump and his tail snaps to the side, upsetting the inkbottle.

“Ysa!” Sammael curses, jumping to his feet with a flap of wings.

The mute pulls in on himself, watching as his keeper bends down to snatch up the book he was reading while kicking another volume away from the spreading pool of ink. Sammael seems to have saved the books, but the pile of notes on which he was working so studiously is now a congealing mess in a black puddle. The markings on his skin fragment into jagged, furious lines.

“Ysa!” he yells again. “Trehki pragdr vatrim dresha jrekvr!” He’s shaking now, the markings speeding to turn his skin the alarming, red color that the mute has seen only once before, and the room is thick with power. Sammael is trembling, free hand curled into a fist, and his lips pull tight as his throat works restlessly.

Finally, he opens his mouth again and roars, “Fucking _cunt!_ ”

The mute has been doing his best to remain unobtrusive in the face of his keeper’s fury, but his head comes up sharply at the unexpectedly familiar words. The movement catches Sammael’s eyes—of course it does—and the not-man turns to face him. For an instant, Sammael’s power stirs against the mute’s skin like the sudden drop in pressure before a storm. Then something in the mute’s expression seems to catch the not-man’s attention and Sammael frowns as the markings on his skin slow.

“Fucking cunt,” he repeats, enunciating carefully.

The mute does his best not to react _(it’s the safest course of action when it comes to Sammael)_ but his eyes widen minutely anyway. He _knows_ those words—knows the first one anyway, which is the word for what they do, for their coupling.

Sammael’s expression has gone very, very still. The lines creep across his skin rather than flow, his wings and tail are frozen. The only bit of motion about him is the rapid flickering behind his eyes.

Finally, he says, “You speak English, don’t you? As much as you speak anything.”

More words—words that create a meaning that the mute recognizes—and the mute is struck by a shocked sense of vertigo, like falling.

Still watching him closely, Sammael orders, “Nod if you can understand me.”

The mute’s thoughts tremble as he fights to think through his disorientation, to debate the wisdom of admitting his comprehension. There are unforeseen consequences, he’s sure—countless ways for the not-man to use this development to hurt him. The smart thing to do would be to remain still—not to upset the tenuous balance he has found here.

But the mute has been locked in his own head for so long, left isolated and lonely by his inability to understand what’s going on around him, and he’s desperate for even the frail connection that a one-sided conversation will grant him. His nod is slight, almost imperceptible, but it makes Sammael’s gaze sharpen.

“Interesting,” the not-man breathes. He seems to have forgotten all about the book in his hand, the mess on the floor, his ruined notes. Taking a step closer to the mute, he muses, “There’s still the problem of speech, but—wait. Do you know how to write?”

The mute rifles through the hollow spaces of his past in search of an answer and comes up with a fragmentary memory that seems to indicate that he does. In the memory, his hand draws a slender, metal object across an open page. The metal object leaves black, squiggly lines in its wake, indicating that it’s a quill of sorts, even if it looks nothing like the one Sammael uses.

Releasing the memory, the mute nods again and then jumps when Sammael tosses the book he was so desperate to save a moment before across the room. Ignoring the ensuing clatter when the projectile knocks over another stack of books, Sammael holds his hand out for fresh sheets of parchment that are even now rising from his desk. The parchment comes like a well-trained pet, flying right into the not-man’s palm. The quill lifts from the inky mess on the floor, shakes itself off, and floats forward to hover in front of the mute’s face.

“Take it,” Sammael orders.

The mute obeys, flinching as a fresh bottle of ink clatters into place to his right. He’s beginning to think that he made the wrong decision. The intensity of his keeper’s response is terrifying. He has never felt so thoroughly transfixed by Sammael’s gaze. Carefully, he keeps his eyes lowered as Sammael comes to stand in front of him and drops the parchment on the floor. Before the last sheet has settled, the not-man's voice lashes out in brusque demand.

“What are you?”

The mute grips the quill tightly, slicking his fingers black with ink, and tries to indicate his confusion over the question with an upward glance of his eyes. He’s a mute, he’s a pet, he’s whatever Sammael wants him to be to the best of his meager abilities. What other answer is there?

“What are you?” Sammael repeats, and now he sounds less eager and more angry.

Cringing inside where he hopes it doesn’t show—fear excites demons, it drives them into a frenzy—the mute shakes his head while lifting his shoulders in a shrug.

Sammael snorts. “No, of course you don’t know. That would be too easy. But you know where you got this, don’t you?” Crouching with an abrupt movement, he grips the broken necklace hanging from the mute’s neck and gives it a tug. “Did you find it? Steal it? Did someone give it to you?”

The mute starts to shake his head again and this time Sammael’s power lashes out, slicing his cheek open. The cut heals almost immediately, but the pain and the wet splash of blood is still shocking. Trembling, the mute presses the back of his ink-stained hand to his cheek and looks up at his keeper.

“Don’t you fucking shake your head at me,” Sammael snarls. “Use the goddamned paper!”

The mute’s vision has begun to blur in a way that warns him tears aren’t far off, and he bends his head to write his answer before he can’t see the parchment. Dipping the tip of the quill into the ink seems unnecessary with the ink still dripping onto the mute’s thigh, but the mute does it anyway. Then, setting the tip to the parchment, he thinks his answer in his head— _I always had it_ —and waits for his hand to translate the words into squiggles.

Nothing happens.

Power is building in the room again, raising the hairs on the back of the mute’s arms and neck and sending shivers down his spine and making his stomach twist in on itself. Hyper aware of Sammael’s presence, the mute licks his lips, focuses and tries again—tries to recall how the squiggles should look. His hand twitches once and is still.

“Problem?” Sammael asks—just that one word, softly spoken and almost pleasant, but his power is licking across the mute’s skin like fire and making him sweat.

Wildly, the mute considers just scribbling something on the parchment—anything, even if it’s nonsense—and then decides that wasting parchment like that would only make Sammael angrier. He’s going to be punished for this, but he doesn’t have to make it any worse for himself than it has to be. Clenching his jaw, the mute sets the quill down on the floor and puts his trembling, ink-stained hands in his lap.

There’s a long moment of silence and then, unexpectedly, the soft, humorless sound of Sammael laughing. The burn of building power dissipates with the sound and the mute chances a glance up to see his keeper pacing away while running careless hands through his hair.

“Figures,” Sammael mutters as he turns back toward the mute. “I don’t know why the hell I bothered.” Fixing the mute with cruel eyes, he continues, “All the pathetic, mewling creatures left in this cesspool and I’m stuck with a repulsive, illiterate mute. Lucifer must be laughing his ass off.”

The mute knows how Sammael feels about him—he sees the disgust in his keeper’s eyes every day—but actually hearing the not-man give voice to his revulsion is somehow worse. As hard as he fights to conceal it, the mute knows that the cringing, sinking pit that Sammael’s words have left in his chest is reflected on his face. If he ever knew how to hide his emotions, then he has forgotten that trick along with everything else. Sammael looks down at him, gloating satisfaction twisting his lips, and the mute lowers his eyes while drawing his knees up against his chest in a feeble attempt at protection.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, _Beauty,_ ” Sammael announces, and the last, sneered word cuts the mute deep inside. “I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to nod once for yes and shake once for no. Think you can manage that, or am I asking too much?”

The mute feels a tear slip from one eye and hates it—hates himself for being so weak, so transparent—but Sammael is waiting on an answer and so he nods.

“Did Ruby send you?”

The mute doesn’t even know who Ruby is, but since he wasn’t actually _sent_ here at all, he feels safe enough shaking his head. He continues to shake it as Sammael runs through a list of names and, finally, his keeper demands, “Did _anyone_ send you?” When the mute shakes his head again, Sammael snorts. “Great, so I’m saddled with you for no fucking reason whatsoever.”

The mute starts to nod and then freezes as a warning tendril of power curls around his throat.

“That was an observation, not a question,” Sammael announces. The mute swallows once, struggling against the constriction, and then his keeper’s power falls away again and the questions continue.

They seem to go on forever—a steady barrage to which the mute has no answers. He can tell that Sammael is becoming increasingly frustrated from the glances he casts in the not-man’s direction—curled lips, twitching tail, snap of red lines across pale skin. Finally, when the mute fails to answer yet another inquiry into when he had his run-in with the incubus—the mute doesn’t even know what an incubus _is_ —Sammael turns and stalks over to drop down into the oversized chair by the room’s single window.

Sammael hardly ever uses that chair when he reads—prefers sprawling on the floor where he can stretch his wings—but it’s perfectly situated for looking outside, which is what the not-man is doing right now. The mute never looks outside if he can help it himself. Looking up at the sky reminds him only of the freedom he’ll never have. Looking down provides an excellent view of the slave pens and one of the castle’s many killing grounds. There’s nothing to see there that the mute wants any part in.

“So,” Sammael says after a long moment. “You’re weak, you’re ugly, and you’re stupid. Is there anything you _are_ good for, _Beauty_?”

This time, the mute can’t quite hide his flinch at the sheer disgust tainting the word. The motion draws Sammael’s eyes and hangs a cruel smile on his lips.

“Bothers you, doesn’t it, _Beauty_?” Stretching his legs out in front of him, he leans back in the chair. “Well, get used to it, because that’s what you’re going to answer to from now on. If I’m not going to get any good use out of you, I’m at least going to have my little jokes.”

The mute bites his bottom lip and lowers his gaze to hide the tears in them. Despite his instinctive hesitation when Sammael asked if he understood, he didn’t know that language could be so cutting—didn’t know that mere words could wound him so deeply. And, unlike the wounds on his body, he isn’t going to be able to heal these without scarring.

After a few moments, Sammael speaks again, his tone considering. “Although maybe there is something else you can do.”

When the mute chances a glance, his keeper is regarding him with a speculative expression.

“Come here.”

Filled with cringing hope—given a chance, he knows he can be good, he can be worth something—the mute starts to get to his feet only to be knocked back against the floor by a slap of power.

“ _Crawl_.”

Blinking back tears, the mute bows his head and makes his way across the room on hands and knees. When he reaches Sammael’s feet, he stops and waits for further instructions.

“Take it out.”

The mute knows all too well that refusal will bring punishment, but he honestly doesn’t know what Sammael wants. Take what? Out of where? And what is he supposed to do with it, whatever ‘it’ is? He looks up, confusion plain on his face, and Sammael sighs as he shifts his wings up and out, making himself more comfortable.

“My cock,” he clarifies. The word sounds a great deal lewder in Sammael’s mouth than it does in the mute’s head. “You _do_ know what a cock is, don’t you? That thing that you can’t seem to get enough of?”

Flushing at the contempt in his keeper’s voice, the mute gets up on his knees and obeys, pushing the waist of Sammael’s pants lower and reaching inside for what he wants. When he pulls his keeper’s cock free, the mute is startled by how different it looks now from all the other times he has seen it, moments before or after it has been buried inside him. It’s smaller now, and limp, and pale. He holds it carefully in his hands—ridiculous to think that he could do anything to hurt Sammael, but the skin sheathing this bit of flesh is so silken and soft that it feels like it might tear with the slightest mishandling.

“I don’t suppose you know how to give a blowjob.”

Not really, no. Except. Except the mute maybe knows what a blowjob is, and if the disjointed images the word brings up is accurate, then he thinks that he knows what Sammael wants. Praying that these memories are more functional than those associated with writing, the mute rises higher on his knees and edges his mouth closer to his keeper’s cock. He half-expects Sammael to strike him, but instead a hand lands on the back of the mute’s head and draws him in. Relieved pride flares in the mute’s chest as he closes his mouth around the not-man’s cock ...

... and is immediately yanked off again as Sammael hisses. Power stings through the mute, burning and drawing fresh tears. It fades almost instantly, but the mute’s respite is brief as Sammael wrenches his head back at a painful angle.

“Watch the teeth,” his keeper snarls, and the mute quickly nods. Sammael continues to hold him, his gaze coolly assessing, and after a moment he adds, “Bite me again and I’ll shatter your jaw first. See if you can make me come before the bone knits together.”

That sounds like an experiment in which the mute would rather not participate and he nods again while pleading with his eyes. This time, Sammael’s grip grudgingly loosens and the mute is allowed to bow his head forward again. He’s careful as he closes his mouth around first the tip of keeper’s cock and then, when nothing goes wrong, as he pushes further down and swallows the whole thing.

As small and soft as Sammael’s cock is right now, it’s still a little difficult to fit the whole length in his mouth. The mute manages, though, and casts his eyes up for further instructions.

Grimacing, Sammael hitches his legs open wider. “Christ, you’re not going to make me talk you through the whole thing, are you? Just—suck on it. And use your tongue.”

Obediently, the mute licks once along the length of his keeper’s cock, which startles him by twitching in response. Not sure what’s happening, the mute tries to pull away, but Sammael’s hands are on his head, pressing him down.

“Keep going,” the not-man orders, and his voice sounds funny—a little breathy, like he isn’t getting enough air.

The mute isn’t getting all that much air himself—mouth otherwise occupied and nose buried in the wiry hairs crowning Sammael’s cock—but he isn’t being hurt and he seems to be doing something right for once, and so he shuts his eyes and concentrates on sucking and licking the soft flesh in his mouth. When Sammael’s cock twitches again, he takes it as a sign of approval and sucks harder.

Focused on keeping his teeth away from that sensitive flesh and distracted by the lively twitching, the mute doesn’t notice that his keeper’s cock has started to grow. He doesn’t notice until the head nudges against the back of his mouth. The ensuing gag reflex is automatic and, choking, he tries to sit up. Sammael’s hands, which have been rhythmically kneading the mute’s hair, clench, halting him.

“You try to pull off again,” Sammael growls, “and I will make the time you spent in the basement seem like a birthday party.”

The mute doesn’t know what a ‘birthday’ is—or a ‘party’, for that matter—but he knows a threat when he hears one and so he grips the arms of the chair and pushes himself forward. Sammael’s cock bumps the back of his mouth, and the gagging isn’t any better the second time around, but the mute just tightens his hold on the chair and lets it happen.

It’s difficult to keep up the sucking and licking when his body is doing its best to vomit, but Sammael doesn’t seem to mind. The not-man’s cock is still swelling, filling the mute’s mouth and pushing deeper. Finally, the cockhead, which has been pressing against the back of his mouth and making him gag, angles down and slips into the mute’s throat. The thick flesh wedges his throat closed, cutting off his air and panicking him, but he continues to cling to the chair and doesn’t pull away.

Above him, Sammael groans. “G-good—oh fuck, s’good.”

Despite the pound of blood in his ears and the increasing dizziness of oxygen deprivation, the mute’s chest warms at the praise. He hopes that he won’t accidentally bite down when he passes out—there’ll be punishment, but more importantly he doesn’t want to disappoint his keeper. Before his vision has even begun to gray, though, Sammael yanks the mute’s head up. For a few seconds, the mute is left with nothing but the tip of his keeper’s cock in his mouth and he takes a deep, hasty breath around it. Then his face is dragged forward again, nose buried against the not-man’s groin.

It takes a couple of repetitions for the mute to figure out what Sammael wants. He immediately starts bobbing on his own and the tension in his keeper’s fingers eases. The not-man is still holding onto the mute’s hair, but languidly now, and there’s a steady stream of moans coming from his mouth.

“Yeah, like that,” he pants. “Take it, good boy, good pet.”

The mute is making a mess of his chin, sticky drool seeping out around the edges of Sammael’s cock when he pulls up. The cock didn’t taste like much of anything when the mute first swallowed it, but there’s a new flavor now—salty and weird, but not exactly unpleasant. The mute’s jaw begins to ache, and his knees, but he ignores them—is willing to do this as long as it takes to please his keeper.

He’s taken by surprise when Sammael shoves him down again, cock driving deep into the mute’s throat, and keeps him there.

“Swallow,” Sammael demands. “Fucking—oh fuck, _swallow_.”

Swallowing is difficult with his throat this full, but after struggling for a couple of moments the mute manages anyway. Sammael lets out a single, shuddering cry and his hips jerk, driving his groin hard against the mute’s face. His cock seems to swell as it twitches wildly in the mute’s throat and then there’s fluid running down into his stomach.

Sammael’s hands draw him off enough so that he can taste the warm spurts—that salty, strange taste again, but more, stronger. The mute could let the liquid dribble down his chin with his spit, but it’s reflex to swallow and so he does that instead. When his keeper’s cock has quieted and lies still on his tongue, he seals his lips more tightly around it and, tentatively, laps his tongue along the slick length.

After all, he hasn’t been given permission to stop.

Sammael groans again, rolling his hips, and lets the mute lick and suckle until the cock in his mouth is small and manageable again. Then he pulls the mute up and tilts his head back. The lines on Sammael’s skin are curling aimlessly. His golden eyes are half-lidded and lazy.

“Was it good for you?” he drawls.

The mute licks some of the spit from his lips as he cuts his eyes to one side, not sure what his keeper means. He’s worried that his ignorance will ruin Sammael’s good mood, but the not-man is smiling as he hauls the mute up. Following the unspoken directive, the mute climbs into his keeper’s lap and then opens his mouth in a heavy pant.

“Guess so,” Sammael murmurs as he continues to stroke the full length of the mute’s erect cock with one hand while gently squeezing his balls with the other. Blindly, the mute braces himself on his keeper’s shoulders and spreads his legs wider. He was too focused on pleasing Sammael to notice his desire before, but now that the not-man has drawn his attention to it, the needy throb of his cock is all he can think about.

His arousal feels different without the hunger’s influence—not as intense but, in many ways, better. Cleaner. The mute isn’t dripping as much as he normally does, isn’t lost in the hunger, can feel every gloriously clever thing that Sammael does with his fingers. As the not-man rubs his thumb over the head of the mute’s cock, the mute’s body shudders. His head drops forward to rest on Sammael’s shoulder beside his right hand.

“Shift up for me,” Sammael murmurs in his ear, and after a disorganized moment the mute obeys, getting one knee on either side of Sammael’s body and lifting his ass into the air. Almost immediately, something thin and squirming forces its way inside and the mute jerks at the unexpected invasion.

“Shh,” Sammael breathes, pushing down on the small of the mute’s back with a gentle brush of power. “You’re gonna love this.”

The mute sincerely doubts it. He doesn’t mind having the not-man’s cock inside him when the hunger is riding him—he craves it then, needs it like he needs oxygen or water—but this doesn’t feel like anything but a violation. It feels _wrong_ , and it’s making his ass burn, and his cock has begun to wilt a little despite Sammael’s attentions.

Then the thing inside of him—Sammael’s tail, the mute recognizes the shape—slides in just a little farther and he jerks forward again, thrusting his hips against the not-man’s abdomen. He isn’t trying to get away this time, though, and Sammael’s chuckle indicates that his keeper understands that. The not-man’s tail moves again, pushing against that shocking spot inside of him, and the mute pants out his pleasure in harsh gasps. His cock is leaking now, Sammael’s right hand smearing the fluid all over while his left toys with the mute’s balls and it feels, it feels—oh God, it feels so good.

“Mine,” Sammael growls in the mute’s ear, and then his teeth are buried in the mute’s skin at the corner of his jaw and the mute’s body gives a shudder as he climaxes.

Sammael holds him after, wings folded in and lightly stroking the mute’s back. When the mute’s limbs are working again, his keeper eases him up and on his feet. He stands before the not-man, swaying slightly.

For the first time that he can remember, his chest feels light: all the knots undone. His keeper is smiling at him, was just _kind_ , and it feels like basking in the sun. Looking into Sammael’s golden eyes, the mute thinks his special word and wonders ...

Then the not-man says, “Too bad you won’t scar up. You’d make a good pleasure slave if you weren’t so fucking ugly.”

Devastation settles into the mute with the weight of stone, and his shoulders sag.

Carelessly, Sammael tucks his cock back into his pants and leans his head back against the chair. His eyes return to the window and the slave pens below.

“Go shower, _Beauty_. And find something to get the knots out of your hair. I want to be able to get a proper grip the next time you blow me.”


	5. Chapter 5

It’s odd, being allowed out of Sammael’s sight. After so many months of being called to heel if he drifted more than half a room away, the mute feels naked wandering the castle’s halls. His actual nudity doesn’t bother him—never did: his body isn’t his, he knew that before Caliban found him—but being without his keeper, running into demons around every corner ... He keeps expecting to be touched, to be hurt, to be mocked.

There _are_ a couple of leers, and every once in a while a demon will casually toss him into a wall so that they don’t need to walk too near him, but for the most part Sammael’s protection seems to hold. Besides, the mute prefers this naked vulnerability to the not-man’s company. Ever since Sammael found a language that he understands—ever since those few, inexplicably kind moments they shared—the not-man has been nothing but cruel.

When the hunger drives them to couple, Sammael grips the mute’s freshly cleaned, well-combed hair and growls all his imperfections into his ear. It has happened often enough now that, even without the aid of a mirror, the mute has memorized his faults.

He has disgusting green eyes when they should be black, or red, or yellow, or white—anything but green. Not even the half-human slaves in the pens outside have green eyes: the closest they come is a pale violet. His skin is hideously soft and all but unmarred. The speckles on his face and arms and chest don’t count as scars—they’re part of his skin and nothing but grotesque. The mute’s hair, shaggy and slightly curling now that it has been washed, refuses to grow any further than a couple of inches past his ears. His lips are monstrously fat. His body nauseatingly unornamented by wings or horns or scales.

He’s an aberration. A freak. It makes Sammael sick just to look at him.

And that’s just his appearance, doesn’t even begin to touch on how weak he is, how feeble—and he can’t even scream, what the fuck good is he, and Sammael has wondered on several occasions whether the mute would actually become more intelligent if his brains were removed.

Sammael whispers those faults in the mute’s ear every time they fuck, and he’s always angry—he seems to become more furious the more accepting of his repugnant nature the mute becomes—and the mute has no idea what he can do to make his keeper happy.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Three months since that day in the library, the mute finds himself hurrying mindlessly through the first floor hallways. Gibbering, the cloud-shaped demon follows him. It isn’t touching him, isn’t causing him any physical pain—never does, those are Sammael’s rights—but it doesn’t need to touch him to torment him. All it needs to do is speak, to drive that maddening noise into the mute’s head and make his thoughts melt and bleed.

Seems like that’s one of the demon’s favorite amusements, these days.

The mute isn’t thinking about anything but escape when he turns left instead of right and stumbles down a flight of stairs, and the first thing he realizes is that the gibbering has stopped. He pauses at the bottom, holding onto the wall and panting, to look over his shoulder. The cloud-demon hovers at the top step looking down at him. Looking down but not coming any closer.

Now that the mute thinks about it, he has never seen the demon navigate a staircase before.

 _That’s right, bitch!_ the mute thinks, but his triumph fades as he looks around and realizes where he is. The air is chill and slightly damp. On all sides, the walls are gouged—deep grooves dug into the stone by the fingers or other appendages of the unfortunate wretches dragged through these hallways. Now that the mute’s brain is starting to recover from the gibbering, he can hear the distant screams echoing around him.

The basement. He ran into the basement.

Shuddering, he looks back up at the top of the stairs, but the cloud-shaped demon is still there, waiting. Although it has no face, no expression, the mute can sense its amusement at having forced him down here, into the very place he has been avoiding. Even if it can’t pursue him any longer, this is probably the most entertainment it’s had in weeks.

A dull, creeping anger tightens the mute’s stomach. He’s been humiliated and hurt, hollowed out by forgetfulness, is hated by his keeper. It isn’t fair that he’s become the sport of choice for this demon as well.

Goaded by the anger, the mute turns his back on the stairs and strides down the hall—in the opposite direction from the screams. He’s sick of letting his fear rule him. He may be as weak and stupid and as ugly as Sammael says, but that doesn’t mean he has to be a coward as well. As he strides forward and the screams fade away behind him, something deep inside of his chest seems to fall back in line—like a broken bone settling—and the mute straightens.

He can almost— _almost_ —remember feeling like this before, feeling stronger, and the half-memory brings with it another. Suddenly, there’s a ghostly weight on the mute’s shoulders—a jacket of some sort, brown and smelling like cured hides. The broken necklace he wears has become a leather cord and gold amulet. His empty hands curl around a smooth grip—a weapon, something small and simple looking, but capable of spitting lightning and slaying from afar.

He thinks ... he thinks that maybe he wasn’t always prey.

The almost-memories fall away quickly enough as he continues down the hall, but the settling in his chest remains. The mute has no past, no name save the one his keeper bestowed upon him in hatred, but none of that feels as permanent as it did a moment ago.

 _I wasn’t always prey,_ he thinks slowly. _I used to be a hunter. I killed things. I saved people. I had a—a leather jacket and a car and a gun and my name was—was what?_

Although the mute strains against the black space of years until his head aches, he can’t peel back that last layer of oblivion. Failure turns his mouth sour and pulls his chest tight. Sammy was right. His name is lost forever, and it isn’t coming back. Neither are his memories. He is what he is now, no matter what he may have been before, and that isn’t going to change.

Despair crashes in on him with the weight of falling concrete and his knees buckle. He’s going to break down. He’s going to sink to the stone floor in the middle of this hallway and sob until the hunger wakes and Sammael comes to get him.

 _No,_ he thinks desperately, and then, more strongly, _No!_ Spinning to the side, the mute drives a frustrated fist into the wall and finds himself connecting with wood instead of stone.

A door.

For a long moment, the mute looks at the door and feels nothing but pain. Gradually, though, the agony of his lost hopes is replaced with a dull, curious throb.

What could Sammael be keeping down here in the dark?

There’s no locking mechanism on the door, so it isn’t a cell or a pen, and it’s too far away from the screams—which are inaudible here—to hold supplies for the torture chamber. It’s likely empty, abandoned or never filled, but the mute needs to distract himself and indulging his brief spate of curiosity by exploring this room— _these_ rooms, there are more doors further down the hall—seems as good a distraction as any.

Just as the mute suspected, there’s nothing but an empty room behind the first door. The second and third are similarly vacant. He opens the fourth door casually, expecting to be disappointed yet again, and lets out a soft gasp.

The fourth room is no larger than the others, but it’s piled high with objects that the mute can only think of as artifacts. Some of the artifacts, the mute recognizes—there’s a broken chair leg, and a lampshade _(only he doesn’t know what a lamp is or why it needs shade)_ , and a mismatched set of cracked plates. Other objects are more arcane, bits of rusted metal and glass and rotting cloth too fragmentary to identify.

The next five rooms are much the same, all stuffed too full to allow entry, but there has been an attempt at organization in the sixth. Here, the artifacts are heaped in rows, leaving a wide aisle running down the middle of the cavernous room. Wide-eyed, the mute steps inside and wanders around, not touching anything—some of the artifacts look like they would crumble away with a strong breath. Just looking and prodding at the aching hollows of his memory, trying to shake something loose.

“Beauty.”

The mute jumps, startled and vaguely guilty, and turns to face Sammael, who is standing in the doorway. The guilt is irrational, he knows—he hasn’t done anything wrong—and for a brief moment, he resents his keeper for making him feel like this. Then his resentment tumbles away with the realization that the hunger is wide-awake and pulsing in his chest—has been for some time, judging from the burn in his veins. His cock aches, has been leaking fluid long enough to leave the inside of his thighs slick. He was just too absorbed in the artifacts to notice.

Sammael moves forward with measured, deliberate steps until he’s standing just inches from the mute. His eyes are burning, his wings trembling and the markings on his skin whirling. If the mute is hungry, then his keeper is clearly ravenous. A flicker of unease stirs in the mute's belly.

Then Sammael snaps, shoving the mute to the floor and pulling his own pants down and thrusting in. For the first time since his kindness in the tower, he's silent: mouth too occupied with the mute’s throat and shoulders to manage anything as complicated as speech.

It’s over startlingly fast—two or three minutes at most and then the not-man is growling as he comes, wings snapping wide and body jerking. Sammael freezes in place for a moment, entire body straining, and then his arms give out and he collapses on top of the mute. Their chests slide together, slick and hot, and the mute lets out a soft, pained breath.

Sammael may be sated, but the mute is still hard and aching, still _needing_ , and his cock might as well not be there for all the attention his keeper is paying it. Normally, the mute would take this as his due, but he’s still slightly heady with his revelation in the hall and so instead of lying there docilely, he wriggles beneath his keeper.

Sammael lifts his head at the movement, seeking out the mute’s eyes and locking their gazes. As the mute looks back, he catches a flicker deep in his keeper’s eyes. The not-man’s expression is still indecipherable, but the mute thinks that maybe—just maybe—there is something in there besides anger and hatred.

After a moment, Sammael pushes up onto his hands and knees and crawls backward down the mute’s body. His eyes are still locked on the mute’s, gold glow banked and molten, when he pauses with his breath gusting out over the mute’s dripping cock.

The mute’s heart pounds alarmingly in his chest at the insinuation. He can’t be reading this right—he has given Sammael plenty of blowjobs over the last three weeks, but hasn’t ever received one and hasn’t expected to—but then Sammael’s eyes shut and his mouth descends.

It’s like being swallowed by the sun. The mute bucks, thrusting up into that heat, seeking out more, and Sammael grips his hips and pins them to the floor. The mute is left writhing impotently while his keeper swallows him down, and licks him, and sets his blood and body aflame.

As the mute finally climaxes, the world flakes into white ash and takes him with it.

When he comes around again, the mute finds that he is curled on top of Sammael, who is now lying on his back in the mute’s old place. Sammael’s wings are spread above them in a black canopy, and the not-man is holding the mute with one arm and stroking his hair with the other. His tail is wrapped loosely around the mute’s right ankle.

It feels wonderful, but the mute remembers all too well what has happened every other time his keeper decided to show him any kindness. Chest twisting anxiously, he stiffens and goes still. After several minutes, his muscles have begun to tremble and are coming dangerously close to cramping, and Sammael still shows no signs of letting him go.

The mute has begun to consider sliding free _(it will probably make things worse for him, but he can't stand waiting for the inevitable punishment anymore)_ when the not-man heaves out a sigh and mutters, “I don’t mind you wandering around, but next time you come get me when the fucking incubus venom starts up.”

The mute shifts his head against his keeper’s chest in a nod. He wonders if Sammael is going to shove him away now that the message has been delivered, but instead the not-man nuzzles at the mute’s hair and says, “Relax, Beauty.”

Sammael’s voice is soft, but he sneers the pet name just like always, and the familiar taunt actually eases the tension in the mute’s limbs. The hostility and the disgust make his chest ache, but he’s used to that. Besides, if Sammael is wounding him with words, chances are he isn’t planning other torments.

The not-man’s hand drifts from the mute’s hair to his shoulder and the mute shivers at the light scrape of fingernails across his skin. Sammael hesitates, the only sound in the room their breathing, and then fits his hand over the burn scar.

“Did he do this to you? The incubus that infected you?”

The question is impossible to answer for several reasons, but that has never granted the mute a reprieve for failure. He stiffens again as Sammael’s hand moves, trailing down his arm and onto his lower back.

“It drives me fucking nuts,” the not-man continues conversationally, and the mute prays that the shift in subject means he doesn’t expect an answer. “Something marked you, claimed you, and I can’t. All I get is that disgusting blank skin of yours that regenerates every single goddamned—”

Sammael cuts off abruptly and his hand, which was gripping the mute’s ass hard enough to bruise, relaxes. For a long moment, he’s silent. The mute watches the lines drift through his keeper’s skin and tries to judge Sammael’s mood from their speed.

Then, in a tight, desperate voice, Sammael asks, “What do you dream about? I know you dream, I can—I can almost hear your thoughts at night, sometimes. I think—you dream of lightning, and a graveyard. You keep dreaming the same fucking thing over and over again, but I can’t—”

This time, Sammael’s grip is harsh enough to bead blood beneath his nails and the mute squirms in protest before realizing what a monumentally bad idea it is. Before he can still himself, he’s flipped in a disorienting roll. His back slams against the floor, knocking the air from his lungs, and he struggles to suck in a breath as Sammael looms over him. His keeper’s hair falls in a wild tumble around his face, and his wings rise high above them. His tail is still wound around the mute’s ankle, as restraining as any chain, and it tightens in warning as the mute glances reflexively toward the door.

“Don’t. Move,” Sammael growls, and then settles a hand around the mute’s throat to help him obey.

As the not-man lowers his head toward the mute’s chest, the mute finally remembers how to breathe. There’s something wrong with his lungs, though: he can’t get enough air, and what air comes is overheated, scalding. He finds himself panting shallowly as he meets Sammael’s eyes. Something low and heavy burns in his keeper’s gaze; intent prowls in the set of his jaw and shoulders. The lines on the not-man’s skin snake over each other while his tail twitches, restless in a way that makes the mute’s skin crawl.

He jerks when Sammael’s mouth touches him—he doesn’t mean to, and he flushes with shame at flinching before the pain even begins. Worse, he suspects that he has just earned himself a punishment for no good reason whatsoever. But Sammael doesn’t seem angry. Instead, he chuckles low in his throat and parts his lips. Catching the mute’s nipple between his teeth, he bites down with a slow, steady pressure that isn’t quite painful. His tongue darts across the tiny nub, wetting it, and sends a shock of pleasure down to the mute’s cock. This time, when he jerks, it has nothing to do with fear.

Without lifting his mouth from the mute’s skin, Sammael slants his eyes over. Amusement and satisfaction glint against the heavy burning that darkens his gaze, and the mute steels himself at the echo of hunger he reads there.

Now the pain will come. Now Sammael will bite down for real, he’ll make the mute bleed.

But the not-man draws off instead, moving with teasing deliberation, and then licks his way over to the other nipple to start over again. It’s a kinder torture than the mute has ever been subjected to, but it’s torture nonetheless: held down first by Sammael’s hands and then by his power while his keeper licks and suckles and bites his way across the mute’s body. Sammael torments the mute’s chest first, and then his neck, and then begins the slow, torturous path south to his stomach.

By the time Sammael reaches his hips, the mute is trembling all over—he can feel the tremors running through him despite the power blanketing his body. His cock is once more full and hard and red. When he thinks of how it felt to have his keeper’s mouth there, something jerks low in his groin and his head spins.

After a final, lingering bite, Sammael lifts his mouth from the curve of the mute’s hipbone and then shifts down to ease himself between the mute’s legs. The coil of his tail lifts where it is still wrapped around the mute’s ankle, bringing his leg with it. Closing his oversized hands around the mute’s upper thigh, Sammael lowers his head again.

Half an hour later, both of the mute’s inner thighs are sticky with spit. His cock and balls, ignored, ache fiercely. There are wet tear lines down both of his cheeks.

He never knew—never could have dreamed—that something could feel so wonderful and horrible at the same time.

The mute would be begging if he had a voice— _is_ begging with his eyes, if only Sammael would look up—but the not-man’s attention is riveted to the mute’s cock as he lowers his left leg to the floor. One corner of Sammael’s mouth lifts in a smirk as he reaches out and runs a single finger up and down its aching length.

“You’d be whimpering right now if you could,” Sammael says, in a husky purr of a voice. “You’d be making the prettiest, prettiest noises, wouldn’t you?”

 _God yes,_ the mute thinks as he strains against the not-man’s power in an attempt to thrust up. Then Sammael’s fingernail scrapes over the head of the mute’s cock and the mute’s body locks up in a silent scream. His keeper’s hand lifts a moment later and for a single, maddening second, the mute lies abandoned.

Then Sammael’s body blankets him, pressing down, and Sammael’s cock is hard and rubbing against the crease of his hip. Burying his face in the crook of the mute’s neck, Sammael takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“I want to fuck you.” He whispers the words with the reluctant truth of a confession. “Even when the goddamned incubus venom isn’t acting up, I can’t stop thinking about it, about how fucking good you feel.” Reaching up, he grips the mute’s hair tightly. “I want to bury myself in you and never come out again, I want to own you.” His hand tightens, drawing the mute’s head back in defiance of his own restraining power. “I _do_ own you. You’re mine, Beauty, even if I can’t taste your mind or mark you—do you hear me? You’re fucking _mine_.”

The power disappears suddenly, leaving the mute free to act. Despite his desperate need, he doesn’t move. He knows the punishment for touching without permission.

 _Please,_ he thinks wildly. _Please let me, please._

Then, like a benediction, the whisper comes. “You can touch me.”

Letting out a voiceless sob of relief, the mute hooks one leg up around Sammael’s waist and wraps his arms around the not-man’s back to keep him close. Then, shaking, he rolls his hips and rubs his cock against his keeper’s stomach.

“You want this as much as I do,” Sammael growls between nips along the side of the mute’s neck. “You want to be mine.”

The mute can’t speak so he does his best to answer with his body—humping desperately up against his keeper and digging his fingers into Sammael’s back just beneath the rise of wings and tilting his head back to provide the not-man with better access.

“Show me,” Sammael demands as he licks and bites his way across the scar bisecting the mute’s throat. “Show me how much you want me.”

For a moment the mute is frantic—he doesn’t know how he can be clearer than he’s already being—and then he feels the nudge of the not-man’s cock against the inside of his thigh and understands what his keeper wants. Getting a better hold on Sammael’s side—roughened skin beneath his palm, the burn scar—with his right hand, he reaches down with his left and grips the not-man’s cock. It’s hot in his hand, and throbbing, and so very, very soft, and the mute strokes once before guiding it to his entrance. Then, spreading his thighs as far as he can, he eases the tip of Sammael’s cock inside.

The mute gasps as it breaches him—he isn’t driven by the hunger now, so he isn’t open the way he usually is when they do this, and despite the slick from their earlier coupling even that little bit burns. But not enough to stop. Not so much that he doesn’t push up to meet Sammael on the long slide in.

Sammael’s cock drags through the mute, dry and hot and intrusive, and every time he thinks it must be fully inside of him, Sammael feeds him more. Finally, though, the pulsing length is fully buried and his keeper’s balls are snug against his ass.

“So fucking tight,” Sammael groans, and starts moving.

The friction is a little too fast, a little too rough, and the mute bites down on his lower lip as his channel tears in order to accommodate the intrusion. In the next moment, though, the sting fades as his body repairs itself. The thin layer of blood left behind mingles with the remnants of Sammael's earlier release and slicks the way as he speeds, leaving the mute panting in relief.

“Mine,” Sammael grunts as he adjusts his grip on the mute’s hair.

The mute licks his lips, wetting them, and then his keeper’s mouth is there, demanding.

The sensation is startling, and unfamiliar, and for a couple of seconds the mute freezes, jarred from pleasure by surprise. Then Sammael’s tongue pushes forward, forcing the mute’s lips and teeth apart and sliding inside. The mute still doesn’t know what’s going on, what Sammael is doing to him, but his body has begun to respond eagerly enough. Mindlessly, he presses back and twines his tongue alongside his keeper’s the way he has learned to run it along Sammael’s cock. The technique must transfer well because Sammael moans and presses down harder.

The next time the not-man rocks into him, into that perfect spot, the mute’s body clenches up as he climaxes. His keeper shudders above him and follows. Sammael’s release slicks the mute even more as he collapses, breathing heavily. They lie twined together long enough for the not-man's cock to shrink and fall free and then Sammael shifts against the mute.

“I hate you for making me feel like this,” he whispers, disengaging his hand from the mute’s hair and wrapping it around his throat instead. “Sometimes I wonder if it would stop if I killed you.”

Sammael’s fingers flex threateningly and the mute’s afterglow is shoved aside by a rush of fear. He doesn’t dare breathe beneath the pressure of his keeper’s hand—he’d heal from having his throat crushed, but he hates not being able to breathe, hates the panic it causes. Instead of tightening, though, the not-man’s fingers trail down to the mute’s collarbone.

“But it won’t, will it?” he continues. “You’re my punishment—my own personal slice of Hell—and I’m never getting rid of you.” His fingers hook in the chain and trace its path down onto the mute’s chest. “It’s destiny, I think, you coming here. All gift-wrapped and addressed care of sender.” With a single, light tug, he lets the chain fall and stands up. Then, stretching, he strolls over to retrieve his pants from a latticework of metal, where he tossed them in the initial rush of coupling.

The mute lies where he is for a moment longer before stirring as well. His ass is uncomfortably wet and his own release has started to crust on his stomach. Grimacing, he scrapes at it with one hand and then brushes the flakes away. When he looks up again, the not-man is dressed and watching him with a blank expression.

An odd sensation washes over the mute. He flushes, chest and stomach fluttering. He feels exposed beneath his keeper’s gaze, painfully so. Feels awkward and unworthy. For the first time in a long time, he wishes that he had a scrap of cloth to cover himself with. Dropping his eyes, he tilts his body subtly away from the not-man’s eyes.

“What had you so fascinated that you missed the venom’s effects?” Sammael asks.

The mute shrugs one shoulder while scratching aimlessly at the stone floor.

For a moment, his keeper is silent. Then he says, “Just because I want to fuck you, doesn’t mean that I won’t fuck you up. I’m a demon, Beauty. We enjoy causing pain. We get off on it. You think I haven’t thought about cutting you up while I fuck you? You think I haven’t dreamed about taking you while I pour acid over your chest? It won’t scar, of course, but it’ll pretty you up for a couple of hours anyway. And when you heal we can start over and do it again.”

The mute’s breath is coming fast and ragged now. There’s no hint of a threat in the not-man’s words—threat suggests something that might not actually happen. No, Sammael is making a statement, he’s making plans. The not-man hasn’t subjected the mute to any of that before because he hasn’t ever coupled with the mute without being forced by the hunger. And the hunger is too demanding to allow the kind of forethought Sammael’s plans require.

Now that they _have_ crossed that line, Sammael isn't going to have any problem doing so again. Whenever and wherever and as often as the mood strikes him.

No matter what the mute does, at some point he’s going to be given the dubious pleasure of fulfilling his keeper’s fantasies. The best he can hope for is to put it off as long as possible.

Scrambling to his feet, he points to the things around them.

Sammael frowns. “You were looking at my collection? Why?”

The mute has no way of answering that question, of course, but Sammael luckily realizes that almost immediately and says, “Never mind. I don’t want you coming in here anymore. You might break something.”

The mute can’t help the way his shoulders slump.

Although he’s clearly enjoying the mute’s reaction, Sammael adds, “Oh, don’t give me that hangdog face. It isn’t like you can properly appreciate any of it. I might as well give you a fistful of colored pebbles to play with.”

It’s another attempt to wound him, to cut him inside where he _can_ scar, and the mute blinks the hot pressure of tears away. He isn’t going to cry in front of his keeper, not over a bunch of words. But the tears continue to threaten, and after a few seconds the mute hardens his jaw. He’s stupid, but he isn’t worthless, and he’s going to prove it. Glancing around the room, he spots something dull and purple sitting atop one of the piles and hurries over to it.

Sammael watches without any sign of concern _(which suggests, doesn’t it, that he was just trying to hurt with his words? that he doesn’t actually think the mute will break his things?)_ and then lifts an eyebrow as the mute picks up the purple artifact.

“You want a chew toy instead of pretty rocks?” he asks, mocking.

Unexpectedly, the mute feels a throb of anger. With a defiant stare, he holds the purple artifact up and then mimes dragging it through his hair.

For a few moments, Sammael continues to watch him with the same, snide smile, and then there’s a flicker of something in his eyes—recognition, the mute thinks. Between one heartbeat and the next, the not-man is by his side, gripping the mute’s wrist and flicking his eyes between the purple artifact and the mute’s face like he can’t decide which to look at. The lines on his skin are whirling and agitated again.

“A hairbrush,” he says tightly. “Are you sure?”

The mute doesn’t know that word, but he looks at the purple artifact again—it’s missing the soft spikes that should be poking out of the rounded end, but still perfectly recognizable—and knows that it’s the right one. He nods, proud to have shown at least one small speck of knowledge, and is shocked by the pain that lashes through his body.

Opening his mouth in a silent cry, the mute drops the purple artifact—Sammael catches it deftly in one hand—and crumples to the floor. Usually, his keeper strikes him and then lets the power go, but this time it's still running through him like an electric current when Sammael crouches and jerks the mute’s head back by his hair.

“You _remember_ ,” the not-man snarls. “You remember and you didn’t fucking tell me.”

It’s a ridiculous, irrational charge—the mute’s mind is a mess of voids and holes and hollows, he can’t recall more than shadows and fragments. And even if he could remember better, he’d still be a letterless mute, so he wouldn’t actually be able to tell the not-man _anything_ without being asked.

Sammael looks to be beyond rationality right now, though. There are yellow sparks of power coming off of his feathers and the purple artifact is melting in his grip, dripping down to the floor. When the not-man realizes what’s happening, he lets out a rough curse and hurls it away. Now, with both hands free, he grips the mute’s chin as well.

“You fucking nod or shake your head— _do you remember what it was like before Armageddon?_ ”

The mute doesn’t know how to answer—what in the world is Armageddon?—but he remembered the hairbrush, and he can guess from his keeper’s question that hairbrushes are from Before, so he nods. Both Sammael and his power release the mute at the same time. Shaking, the mute runs his hands over his body to reassure himself that it’s still whole.

Sammael is pacing up and down the aisle, his tail lashing and his skin whirling, while he mutters under his breath in languages the mute can’t follow. Then, abruptly, he’s back at the mute’s side, binding him in bands of power and jerking him up to hang in midair.

“I could kill you for this,” he snarls. “It probably wouldn’t stick, but I could kill you anyway, you ugly, pathetic _cunt_. Might make me feel better.”

The mute’s eyes are tearing—no stopping it this time, and he hates himself for it, hates the obvious sign of weakness. The tears seem to calm Sammael slightly, though. The not-man doesn’t look any less furious and his tail is still lashing, but the whirl of his markings has slowed perceptively.

“You show up in my kingdom—in my _life_ —and you’re ugly as fuck but I’m forced to fuck you anyway. You’re mute—can’t scream, can’t make those wonderful, pleading noises I like to hear—and you’re too fucking _stupid_ to know how to write so much as your own goddamned name, so I have no way of finding out what you are, or where you came from, or how you got something that I obviously _made_ but don’t _remember_!”

Sammael is yelling now, enough rage in his voice to ignite fires. For all of his anger, though, the mute sees that there are shining, wet tracks running down his keeper’s cheeks. The not-man is actually _crying_ as he yells, and the sight makes the mute’s chest twist uncomfortably.

“Do you know how it feels to have your identity ripped away? Do you have any fucking clue what it’s like to wake up one day and have a bunch of demons slap you on the back and thank you for starting the Apocalypse and not remember anything but your fucking name? Do you know what that’s like? _Do you?_ ”

The mute does. Of course, it isn’t his own name that he has, and his memories are patchy, not lost, but ... he knows. He knows what it's like to be so utterly, devastatingly alone.

As he looks into the not-man’s wild, agonized eyes, the mute understands for the first time that he has something that matters. His memories, disjointed and few as they are, are precious. Valuable. They have power.

“And now you—you _remember_ , but you can’t tell me, and you can’t write it down, and I can’t take the fucking knowledge from your fucking mind because you build your goddamned, _fucking_ walls up faster than I can tear them down, and you—you—”

As Sammael drops to his knees and buries his face in his hands, the power holding the mute up dissolves. He manages to catch himself on the balls of his feet and then stands there uncomfortably while his keeper weeps at his feet.

After a few, awkward minutes, the sound tugs something in the mute’s chest and another memory tumbles free—this sound, that bowed, shaggy head, and the mute’s hand stroking the pain away. Caught up in the memory, he reaches out, brushes the not-man’s hair with his fingertips, and is tossed through the open door and into the hallway beyond by a wave of power. The impact shatters his collarbone and drives several of his ribs into his lungs. He’s still coughing blood when the not-man appears before him.

There are tear tracks on Sammael’s cheeks, but he isn’t crying anymore. He doesn’t look hurt or angry—doesn’t look like he has ever been capable of emotions. He stands over the mute for a minute while the mute’s collarbone fuses back together and his ribs snap back into place and then says, “Don’t you dare touch me again without permission.”

The warning sounds odd when spoken in that colorless voice. Sammael tilts his head, looking down dispassionately, and then adds, “When I’m not fucking you, you’ll spend your time here. You’re going to go through every last item in these rooms and you are going to figure out a way to tell me what everything is. Do you understand?”

Wiping the blood from his lip with one hand, the mute nods.

“Good,” Sammael says, and then jerks the mute to his feet with a tendril of power.

The mute lets out a hiss—he’s still tender inside—and then sucks in a pained breath as he is sent back into the room at a stumbling run.

“Get started.”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

There’s enough in the rooms to last the mute several eternities. Aside from the six he already opened, there are twenty more—one so large that he has to squint to make out the opposite end. Now that the mute is spending his time down here, he notices that there’s also a steady influx of items from the outside world: demons leave and come back bearing clutches of artifacts. Since the demons lose interest in the objects once they have been deposited in one of the rooms, the mute guesses that Sammael is responsible for the trips.

He wonders if the burnt thing was scrounging through the rubble on a similar mission when it found him.

Most of the artifacts are too fragmentary for the mute to identify. Some of them look whole—a grey box made of some squishy material that the mute can scar with a press of his fingernail, for instance—but any memories connected to them lie in the empty, hollow places in the mute’s mind.

Other artifacts come easily.

Knife.

Bullet.

Baseball—something wrong with this one, though: the metal ball seems too heavy to be thrown the way the mute remembers.

Explaining to Sammael is even more difficult than figuring out what things are. The lack of words is frustrating and mimes can only take them so far. Occasionally, Sammael loses his temper and tries to invade the mute’s mind until they’re both sweating and exhausted. Other times, frustrated by the mute’s inability to communicate or possibly by his own inability to comprehend, he drags the mute down to the torture chamber for a quick lesson in motivation.

And when the mute isn’t working, they get around to acting out his keeper’s fantasies, which is every bit of fun the mute thought it would be.

But.

But at night, after the mute has licked Sammael’s cock to fullness, after he has straddled the not-man’s lap and ridden them both to completion, sometimes Sammael will hold him. Sometimes Sammael will bite at the mute’s lips—it’s called a kiss, the mute has learned from one of Sammael’s stray comments. Sometimes the mute will fall asleep with Sammael’s wingtips ruffling his hair and Sammael’s tail stroking his stomach and Sammael’s hand pressed over his heart and if there are dreams on those nights, then they are kind and the mute will wake with a smile on his lips.

More and more, when he looks at the not-man, Sammael is not the name he thinks in his head.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s just after midday and the mute is on his way back down to the basement. The bruises that Sammael left on one arm and both hips have already healed—they healed moments after they appeared, just like always—but today is the first day that the mute wishes they would stay just a little longer. Maybe, if they stayed, Sammael would be less eager to experiment.

The mute hasn’t had to endure anything this morning, and Sammael doesn’t have anything planned for the rest of today either, but tomorrow is a different story. Tomorrow, Sammael whispered in the mute’s ear as he ground the bruises into his skin, they were going to play with piercings again.

Never mind that the mute’s body dissolves the metal within minutes. Never mind that Sammael has to hook the rings through his skin again and again to give himself something to hold onto while he thrusts, something to twist and tease. Never mind how invasive it feels, having all of that metal pushed beneath his skin.

As the mute turns into the final hallway en route to his keeper’s collection, he isn’t thinking about all the shards and scraps he’s about to pick through. He’s thinking about the last time Sammael pierced him, and how a coupling that normally takes no more than a few minutes took hours. He’s thinking about Sammael’s promise of ‘improvements’—rings enchanted to remain inside the mute’s body longer, so that they can play with weights. The mute isn’t sure what that means, although he has an inkling, and he knows that he’s going to be sobbing before they’re through.

Maybe, if he’s lucky and performs well enough, Sammael will reward him by allowing the mute in his bed for the night. Maybe he will hold the mute while he falls asleep—not as though the mute is precious or loved, the mute isn’t that foolish, but as though the mute is acceptable and brings his keeper comfort.

And that’s when he runs into a broad chest.

Startled, he takes a step back and lifts his eyes from the floor, expecting to see one of Sammael’s followers returned with more artifacts for him to sort. Instead, he finds himself meeting a gaze that is shockingly blue—blue like ice, like the sky, like forever.

“Dean,” says the blue-eyed creature, and the strange word rages through him like a brushfire, like a sandstorm, like a thunderclap, and plunges him into the dark.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When he comes around again, the mute is propped up against one of the hallway’s walls while the blue-eyed creature crouches in front of him. It’s holding him up with one hand on each arm _(it’s touching him without permission, Sammael isn’t going to like that)_ and regarding him with a serious, gloomy expression. The creature is dressed oddly. It’s wearing a white shirt and fitted, soft-looking pants and a long, hide-colored coat. A leash is knotted just beneath its Adam’s apple—far too short to make a good lead, as far as the mute can see—and its feet are covered with something that the mute’s mind helpfully tells him are shoes.

The creature doesn’t have horns, or wings, or a tail, or any other augmentation. Most of its body is covered by the strange clothing, yes, but something tells the mute that this creature bears no more scars than he does. Maybe even fewer. Add that to the strange, unheard of blue in its eyes, and it’s probably the most repulsive creature these walls have ever seen.

Finally, something uglier than him.

“Dean,” the creature says. “Can you hear me?”

The mute glances around, not sure how he’s supposed to respond. He has never been addressed like this by any of Sammael’s followers—he doesn’t think they even know how to speak his language the way Sammael does. He has certainly never been touched like this by any of them—firmly but without any obvious intent to hurt. If this is a demon, it’s a very strange one.

As he stares at the creature, its eyes drop to his throat and its mouth tightens. “Can you speak?” it asks.

The question transforms the horrible suspicion that has been tightening his stomach into a certainty. All of Sammael’s followers know about his pet, even those the mute doesn’t know by sight. Which means that this blue-eyed creature doesn’t belong here. It’s an intruder, and likely just as dangerous as the spiders the mute encountered in another basement.

They were blue too.

Either the creature can’t tell that it’s scaring him or it doesn’t care. Glancing down the hallway, it adjusts its hold on the mute’s arm and then lifts him to his feet. “We have to leave now.”

The mute resists, pulling back against the wall. His heart is sprinting wildly, battering against his ribcage like a frightened bird. It wants him to leave? Go back _outside_? Without Sammael’s protection?

“Dean,” the creature says again, stern.

This time, the mute pushes it away and scrambles a couple of feet down the hall. He doesn’t run because he already knows he wouldn’t be able to escape—power is radiating from the creature in thick waves—but he can’t be so close when it says that word to him. That word hurts worse than the cloud-shaped demon’s gibbering. It makes his chest pull alarmingly tight, makes the hollow places in his mind ache.

The mute expects the creature to follow him or strike him with its power, but instead it just looks at him. Its eyes, so indecipherable a moment ago, have gone soft and sad.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” it says.

No, the mute doesn’t. Not at fucking all, as Sammael might say. As shattered as his memories are, he’s pretty sure he would remember meeting something like this.

Which means that the blue-eyed creature is lying to him.

The mute freezes as it comes closer, muscles tensing until his entire body is a scream of protest. With every beat of his heart, the urge to flee pumps through him. It’s dangerous to stay. Madness.

Sammael has never lied to him.

Close enough now to touch, the creature reaches out and lays its hand over the burn scar on the mute’s shoulder. Unlike Sammael’s, it’s a perfect fit, and the mute looks up at the creature with wide eyes. He can feel his fear ebbing, replaced by a gentle calm that doesn’t belong to him.

Sammael has never made him feel things he doesn’t really feel either.

“My name is Castiel,” the creature announces. “And yours is Dean Winchester. I’ve been searching for you for a long time.” Frowning, it clarifies, “Too long.”

But the mute isn’t paying attention anymore. His attention has been caught by two words: Dean Winchester. He examines them, trying to see if they belong to him, and can’t be sure. The first word doesn’t hurt anymore—he must be getting used to it—but it still makes him feel funny. The second seems to mean nothing at all. Besides, whoever heard of someone having _two_ of something as precious as a name? Especially someone like him. It’s obviously ridiculous. Still, there’s a wistful streak running through him that leads him to try the names on for size.

 _Dean Winchester,_ he thinks. _I’m Dean Winchester._

“We have to go,” Castiel says, moving its hand back to his arm and bringing the mute _(or Dean, the mute’s beginning to feel something like ownership when it comes to that name)_ back to the present.

The trickle of calm has stopped now that Castiel’s hand isn’t covering his scar anymore, and when the mute—when _Dean_ —realizes what the creature is after, he pulls away for a second time. Astonishingly, Castiel lets him get away with it again and merely looks at him with that sad, slightly harassed expression.

“Dean, I don’t know what has happened to you over the years, but you must come with me. This place isn’t safe for you any longer: the time of man on Earth has passed.”

Dean shakes his head—not denying Castiel’s words, just their significance—and the creature frowns.

“If you would permit me,” it says, and then, without waiting for anything resembling permission _(Dean isn’t surprised, nothing ever gives him any choice)_ , presses its fingertips to Dean’s forehead. There’s the ghostly sensation of a key turning in a lock and then Dean’s mind opens as the walls surrounding it fold in on themselves. Startled, he slaps Castiel’s hand away and rubs at the skin the creature touched.

 **I am truly sorry, Dean,** Castiel says, but its mouth remains closed and Dean realizes belatedly that each word was dropped directly into his mind. **This ward was supposed to hide you from Sam, but it also prevented me from locating you when you fled. If I had not heard rumors of Sammael’s green-eyed pet, I would never have found you.**

 **Who are you?** Dean asks, and although he doesn’t understand whether he means ‘who’ or ‘what’, Castiel answers both questions.

 **I am an angel of the Lord, and your friend.**

 _Angel,_ Dean thinks, and images of wide-winged creatures carrying spears flicker through his mind, accompanied by a sense of being trapped, of having his Sammy ripped away from him—or maybe it was the other way around. He remembers angels, yes, remembers what they did to him, and in remembering he forgets himself and lashes out at the angel with a punch that shatters the bones in his hand and does absolutely nothing to Castiel’s jaw.

 **You son of a bitch!** he rails, pulling back for another blow despite the pain radiating down his forearm. **You took Sammy, you—**

“Dean,” Castiel says aloud, and at the sound of the angel’s voice a calm settles over Dean’s shoulders, stilling him. Looks like it doesn’t actually have to be touching Dean to control him. Castiel regards Dean while the bones in his right hand knit together and then continues silently, **We had no choice but to remove you from your brother. Sam was moving down a dark path—he might have destroyed everything had we not acted to adjust his course. As it was, he came perilously close to averting the Apocalypse instead of beginning it.**

Dean struggles against the numbing calm and manages to rouse himself enough to ask, **The Apocalypse—that’s why the world is the way it is, isn’t it? Why everything is so messed up?**

 **Yes,** Castiel agrees.

The calm assurance with which it speaks drives the rest of the calm from Dean’s mind and he shouts, **Then you should have let him stop it! You—you’re supposed to be good!** He thinks they are, anyway—remembers being shocked by the betrayal. **Why didn’t you let him stop it?**

There is no guilt in the angel’s eyes. No remorse. Nothing but serenity.

 **All things must come to an end,** it says. **If Sam had averted the End of Days, this world would still have soured beneath his yoke and we would have been unable to open the Gates of Heaven. Imagine this place populated with innocents. Women. Children. Hell on Earth, forever, for everyone. Would you have had us condemn humanity to that for the sake of one man?**

Dean doesn’t know what children are, but he would not condemn any living creature to this place—not knowingly. Some of the challenge fades from his shoulders and he eases back a step.

 **We took you for safekeeping, and we meant to bring you home with us when the time came, but you fled. You went to find your brother.** There’s emotion now—not in Castiel’s voice, but on its face. Pain, maybe?

 **I don’t—I don’t remember.**

 **I think you do,** Castiel responds grimly, and it isn’t pain on the angel’s face but anger. That anger gathers in Castiel’s eyes, and flashes, and becomes lightning—lightning over the field of stones.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Sam says without turning around. “You can’t save me.”

Dean takes a cautious step closer, one hand on the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. If he can’t talk Sam down, then he’ll stop him another way. He won’t let his little brother turn into a monster. “I’m your big brother, dude,” he says aloud. “I’m always going to save you.”

When Sam laughs, there’s an unpleasant edge of madness to the sound. “And how’re you gonna do that, huh? You gonna turn back the clock? You gonna spill all of my polluted, filthy blood on the ground?”

No matter what his intent here _(Sam then me, end it, end it all)_ , the thought of having to hurt his brother makes Dean’s stomach clench. His hand starts to slip from the handle of the gun as he says, “Sammy.”

Between one blink and the next, Sam is gone from in front of him. Instead, a hand grips Dean’s throat from behind and he finds himself pulled back against his brother’s chest.

“You’d have to catch me first, big brother,” Sammy whispers, his breath hot on Dean’s ear. “I’m faster than you.” He tightens his grasp for a moment, cutting off Dean’s air. “Stronger.”

It’s true: Dean never even saw his brother move. He wouldn’t be able to pry Sam’s hand free if he tried. But damned if he’s going to show the man behind him how much that scares him. “You aren’t gonna hurt me,” he says.

Sammy’s chuckle slides over his skin like honey. “You have no idea what I want to do to you,” he hisses.

Maybe Dean doesn’t, not initially, but the long, slow slide his brother’s tongue makes up his neck and over his cheek makes it pretty clear. If he’s honest with himself, it isn’t completely unexpected. Before the angels grabbed him, sometimes he caught Sam ... looking. He isn’t going to pretend that he’s thrilled at having his suspicions confirmed, but there are worse things.

Sam might not have wanted him at all.

“I don’t care,” he says now. “Just—stop this, okay? Stop this and come with me and you can have anything you want.”

In that moment, he means it. All thoughts of the murder-suicide he was planning when he came here are gone. If he can appease the darkness in his brother by offering his own body up, then it will be a small price to pay for the world, for the chance to see his brother smile at him again beneath a sunlit sky.

“You don’t get it, do you, Dean?” Sam hisses, and there’s a ripping sound as he tears Dean’s shirt down the back.

Dean lets his brother strip the ruined shirt from him. He lets his brother take the gun from his jeans and toss it away. When Sam presses up against him again, it’s to slide his hands all over Dean’s bare skin. The contact makes Dean’s muscles tremble involuntarily. He thinks he might be sick in a moment.

“I don’t just want this,” Sam murmurs as his nails rake over Dean’s nipples, pebbling them despite the nausea in Dean’s stomach.

“Just?” Dean tries jokingly. “Dude, gimme a little more credit.”

Ignoring him, Sam flattens his palm over the devil’s trap tattoo covering the skin over Dean's heart. “I want _everything_ ,” he growls. “I want you body, mind and soul.”

Power burns suddenly, spilling from Sam’s palm into Dean’s skin and Dean lets out a harsh, agonized yell. _Now_ he tries to fight, instinctively, but his brother’s power settles over him and holds him still. When Sam finally lifts his hand, taking the pain with it, Dean expects to see smoke rising from his flesh. Instead, he’s unmarked.

Completely.

The tattoo—the super-duper, anti-demon tattoo that Sam insisted they both get—is gone. Which means what little protection Dean had has also fled the coop.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

“I’d put my name here first,” Sam announces, and covers the spot up again with his hand now that he has shown Dean what he did. “I’d burn it into you, right down to your bones. Then I’d fuck you until my name was the only thing you remembered. And then? Then I’d really start breaking you in.”

Dean can only begin to imagine what that would be like—like Hell, probably, and he doesn’t like thinking about Hell even on his good days. He sure as fuck doesn’t want to sign up for a starring role in Sam’s version of the Pit.

“You don’t want to do this, Sammy,” he says, trying to sound as sure of his little brother as he was when he laid down his soul in Sam’s place. “You don’t want to hurt me.”

Sam is silent for a moment and then he rests his face alongside Dean’s. “No,” he agrees. “I don’t want to hurt you.” His hand slides up from Dean’s chest to curl around his neck once more. “That’s why I have to do this, Dean. I have to save you before I destroy you.”

“Sam,” Dean grunts. His brother’s grip is tightening and it’s getting difficult to breathe again. Without any conscious decision, he finds his hand lifting to clutch at Sam’s wrist. “Sammy,” he manages.

“I love you so fucking much,” Sam says, and drags his hand across Dean’s throat in a caress. The blade that follows is formed of nothing but air and power and it cuts through Dean’s skin like butter—cuts all the way back to his spine on the opposite side and slicks his chest with blood. He tries to cry out—tries to say Sam’s name for a third, magical time—and nothing happens. He tries to take a breath and chokes on blood instead. He’s starting to feel faint.

Sam is still pressed against him, is still holding him up, and now he smoothes Dean’s hair with one hand and whispers, “Let it end. Let it all end.”

The world dims at the corners of Dean’s vision, folding in on itself like a paper crane while the sky rips itself into shreds. There’s no pain as he dies—not much, anyway, nothing more than a distant, unimportant sting.

Dean tears free of the memory, ice cold and woozy and gagging on the blood that no longer fills his throat. He’s unresisting as Castiel steps forward and puts an arm around his shoulders and a hand on the back of his head and holds him. Dean shakes against the angel with tears streaming down his cheeks as he sobs in that muted way of his.

It isn’t because he remembers the pain of dying. It isn’t because his brother’s betrayal has been made fresh again in his mind and heart. No, Dean is crying because, for those few seconds, it felt like he had his Sammy back. He can still feel him almost—the warmth of his body against Dean’s back, touching him with so much devotion and love and need.

Being torn away from his brother for a second time is nothing less than cruel.

 _Sam,_ he thinks. _God, Sammy._

“Sam began the End of Days in the same instant you should have died,” Castiel relates softly as it strokes Dean’s hair. “You were caught up in the backlash and some of the energy he released went into you. I don’t think he was conscious of changing you—his attention was otherwise engaged at the time—but his final intentions toward you certainly colored the outcome.”

 **What outcome?** Dean doesn’t really care about the answer as he buries his face against the angel’s shoulder, but he can sense that Castiel is waiting for him to ask and so he does.

“Healing abilities that have preserved your body as it was when you died. An incubus’ lure and ability to draw sustenance from sexual intercourse—both of which are fixated on him alone, as far as I can tell. And this ...” Castiel draws away far enough to cup the broken fastener on its chain. “This used to be the amulet he gave you for protection when you were children. The backlash replaced it with a stronger spell, one that would shield you and send out a distress signal when you needed help.”

Once again, Dean has stopped listening.

 _‘—fixated on him alone—’_

 _‘You do know that Sammael is Demonic for Samuel, right?’_

 _Oh God._

 **It _is_ him, isn’t it?** he demands, focusing through his tears and the betrayed, shocked ache in his chest as he looks at the angel. **Sammael is Sam.**

Castiel’s voice is matter-of-fact but its eyes are compassionate when it says, “You know he is.”

Maybe Dean did. Sometimes. He suspected, anyway. When Sammael was kind.

 **Why can’t he remember me?**

Castiel visibly hesitates and Dean reaches out, grabbing the angel’s coat and shaking it. **_Why can’t he remember me?_**

Castiel gives him an unhappy look and, reluctantly, answers, “I came upon Sam not long after the thousand years of Lucifer’s reign on Earth began. I asked what he had done with you, but he didn’t remember you. I questioned him long enough to ascertain that he knew nothing of the events before the coming of Hell and I—” The angel drops his eyes, evasive, and finishes, “I left him.”

 **You left him.**

There’s a pause that tells Dean clear as the sun that Castiel is about to lie to him and then the angel says, “Yes.”

 **Bullshit.**

Castiel’s eyes come back up at that, and the blue in them is so cold it crackles. “Any further interactions I had with your brother are not your concern, Dean,” it says firmly. “Nor do would it do you any good to hear about them.”

Swallowing, Dean changes tracks and accuses, **You should have looked after him.**

“As evidenced by our present situation, Sam was clearly capable of taking care of himself. My main concern was finding you before the Rapture occurred.”

Dean doesn’t know what this ‘Rapture’ is, but it doesn’t seem important enough to outweigh the fact that Castiel turned his back on Sam. Did Sam have his wings then? His tail? Or did those only come later, after the dark power that twisted the world finally reached him as well? Was he scarred? Clawed and burned? Or could Castiel’s protection have spared him that pain?

“I failed,” Castiel confesses, and privately Dean agrees, although he thinks they may be talking about two different things. “Most of my brothers left with their charges centuries ago. Those who remain have lost their way and are powerless to return home.”

The angel grips Dean’s arm with a sudden motion, eyes too intent for Dean to meet comfortably.

“But it isn’t too late to save you. I have been extremely judicious in my use of power over the years and I believe that I still have enough left to open the gates one final time and bring you through. You can leave this place and take your eternal reward. You can come _home_ , Dean.”

 **Me and Sammy?** Dean asks, but he’s remembering his dream now—not the lightning dream but the other one, the one when Sam came and talked to him—and he thinks that he already knows the answer.

Sure enough, Castiel’s gaze falters and falls. “Sam is too ... tainted ... to pass.”

 **You want me to leave him here.**

“Your mother waits for you. Your father as well, and countless friends. There are thousands of souls beyond the gate to give you comfort and joy. And—and I will be there as well,” Castiel adds, looking strangely shy. “There was a time that would have mattered to you.”

Confused, Dean ignores the last bit and thinks about the rest of what Castiel said. There are countless souls waiting for him on the other side of the angel’s gate and only one to hold him here. Only one soul, which has been tainted and twisted almost beyond recognition. One soul, which offers fear and pain and sorrow, and only occasionally a bittersweet, limping kind of happiness.

Dean thinks about all that Sam-as-Sammael has done to him, all that the not-man has ordered done. He thinks about Sam-as-Sammael’s promise for tomorrow, and how his keeper will almost certainly come up with something more painful and horrifying for their following session, and there’s a large part of him that wants to take the angel up on its offer. He has been afraid and hurt and lonely for so long ... surely he deserves a little peace.

And the dream Sammy _told_ him to go. He told Dean not to do that stupid, noble thing he always does, whatever that is.

Then Dean thinks of how it makes him feel when Sam-as-Sammael strokes him, and kisses him, and how much his keeper needs Dean—so much that it makes Sam-as-Sammael burn with impotent rage and hate. Much of Sam-as-Sammael is monstrous—most of him, if Dean wants to be truthful—but not all of him. Dean thinks of those quiet, almost tender moments—the ones he lives for—and he knows that he won’t be quite smart enough to make the right choice.

 **No,** he says. **I’m staying.**

For a long moment, Castiel stares at Dean and then something in the angel’s gaze hardens. “I will not allow you to damn yourself out of misplaced loyalty to a person who no longer exists,” it says, and this time the hand that grips Dean’s wrist feels like marble, cold and unyielding.

Dean opens his mouth to cry out, to shout an alert, and then remembers that—despite the conversation he has been having—he’s just as mute as ever. Drawing him close, Castiel begins to pull Dean down the hall.

 **No,** Dean protests again and then, casting his mind along the connection that runs between him and Sam-as-Sammael, he shouts an instinctive, wordless plea for rescue.

Castiel looks sharply back at him and a moment later his mind goes numb. Dean’s thoughts stumble over one another like drunken soldiers as Castiel ushers him up a flight of stairs and down another hall. The angel’s steps are hurried now, and he keeps glancing around for opposition that isn’t appearing. They round another corner and there’s a door ahead—what Dean senses is the _last_ door, the way out.

Dean doesn’t see how it happens. All he knows is that one moment he’s being hurried toward the door and then next he has been tossed into the wall with bone-snapping force. He slumps to the ground, body already beginning to mend, and looks up to see Sam-as-Sammael standing over him. Sam-as-Sammael holding Castiel off the floor by the throat. Sam-as-Sammael fuming and radiating energy in a gold storm.

“Where the fuck did you think you were going?” Sam-as-Sammael’s voice is quiet, but it leaves bloodied furrows in the angel’s skin.

Dean pushes weakly up to his hands and knees and Sam-as-Sammael tosses a glance back at him that turns into a stare. Dean meets that golden gaze with a feeling like coming home and doesn’t even think to resist as the tentative brush of Sam-as-Sammael’s mind becomes a bonfire rushing through him. Sam-as-Sammael gobbles Dean’s memories in a single instant—his knowledge of Before, his life since, his meeting with Castiel in the basement corridor—and then he turns away from Dean and, taking a step forward, slams the angel into the opposite wall.

“You were trying to take my pet away from me?” Sam-as-Sammael snarls.

“Please,” Castiel says. Somehow the angel makes the word sound like a polite request instead of a plea. “If you remember anything of what you once were, you must see that this is best for Dean. He wasn’t meant to be left behind.”

“I don’t give a fuck how he got here. What matters is he’s here, and I want him, and I’m going to keep him.” Sam-as-Sammael tilts his head slightly, tail twitching. “And I’m going to enjoy teaching you to keep your filthy, slave’s hands to yourself.”

Castiel’s eyes shift from Sam-as-Sammael’s face and return to Dean’s. “Sam would never do this, Dean,” the angel says urgently. “He tried to kill you to keep you safe from himself—to prevent this very outcome from occurring. The soul in this body may have belonged to Sam once, but it no longer does. Sammael is _not_ your brother.”

Dean considers the angel’s words. They’re true, for the most part. His Sammy wouldn’t have wanted this for him. The winged, tailed creature across the hall bears almost no resemblance to the gentle giant who came to Dean in his dream—nor to the darker, raging brother from the field of stones. The soul that the three versions share in common has been twisted by power and time and darkness until it has become nothing more than a shadow of itself.

But then again, Dean isn’t himself anymore either, is he?

Pain and the passage of time eroded most of his memories, and then Caliban came and finished the job. Whoever he used to be isn’t the pet who fell into Sam-as-Sammael’s hands. That Dean is dead and gone as much as his brother—more so, perhaps.

Dean can see reflections of his Sammy in Sam-as-Sammael’s visage: sharp glimmers as brief as they are blinding. Of himself, however, nothing remains but a gentling ripple in a pool. Soon enough, the water will calm and he will never remember that he was anything but Sam-as-Sammael’s Beauty.

 _You can stop that from happening,_ the gruff voice that led him from Caliban’s basement tells him. _If you go with Castiel, you can reclaim yourself._

He _can_ save himself if he goes with the angel. He can be Dean Winchester with the leather jacket and the car and the gun, the man he almost recalled so many months ago. But to do that, he has to surrender Sam. He has to lose his Sammy all over again.

If there were no trace of Sam left in Sam-as-Sammael, he might be able to make that sacrifice, but as long as even a shadow remains, it’s impossible. He can’t betray his brother like that.

Decision made, Dean looks up into Castiel’s startling blue eyes and feels only a little bad when the angel’s face sags with sorrow.

“See?” Sam-as-Sammael crows. “He wants to stay with me, angel.”

“Because he doesn’t remember anything better, _demon_ ,” Castiel responds with a trace of bitterness. Its head lifts again, mouth firming. “But I do not surrender. The best hope is gone, but others remain.” Slowly, he shifts his icy gaze to Sam-as-Sammael. “While I draw breath, it is my duty to save Dean in any way I am allowed.”

The edge of Sam-as-Sammael’s smile—which is all that Dean can see of his keeper’s face from this angle—turns nasty. “Guess we’ll just have to put an end to all that ‘drawing breath’ crap, huh?”

“You can try,” Castiel says, returning its eyes to Dean. Its gaze softens as it recites, “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.”

Sam-as-Sammael shifts, tail twitching eagerly. “I remember you, angel,” he taunts. “You found me in the desert when I was new.”

Castiel’s steady regard is making Dean uncomfortable. He feels exposed, like all of his hidden past is on display for the angel to see. The angel is looking at Dean as though it knows him better than he knows himself, and Dean isn’t sure that isn’t true.

“He shall call upon me,” Castiel continues, “And I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him, and honor him.”

“ _This_ is what you were looking for?” Sam-as-Sammael laughs. “This powerless, pathetic mute?”

Castiel continues to ignore him as it whispers, “With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”

“I’ll bet you want to show him your ‘salvation’,” Sam-as-Sammael sneers. “Did you fuck him, angel? That why you were so hot under the collar? Thought you slaves were supposed to be the dickless wonders of the supernatural world.”

Castiel’s gaze remains unwavering. Dean wishes he could figure out how to look away, break the connection, but he’s trapped by the gentle devotion in the angel’s eyes. For _him_. For the ugly, stupid pet.

Sam-as-Sammael leans into the angel and says, “He doesn’t look like much, but he’s a fantastic fuck. So warm inside, so tight. Eager, too. He loves taking my cock, the slut.”

Castiel is silent.

“ _Attack_ , you feathered fuck!” Sam-as-Sammael yells abruptly. He’s enraged, and Dean should probably be cringing, but he’s transfixed by the angel’s eyes and can’t move. “Go ahead and call your lightnings now, or are you afraid of a fair fight?”

“I will not fight you,” Castiel murmurs.

“Why the fuck not? There’s enough power rolling around inside that meat sack of yours to level the castle if you tried!”

“It isn’t meant for you,” Castiel says, and the way that the angel’s eyes are locked steadily with Dean’s makes it clear for whom its power _is_ meant.

“You’re just going to sit there while I rip you apart,” Sam-as-Sammael says, disbelieving.

“I believe it was one of your countrymen who said that if a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

Sam-as-Sammael’s response, when it comes, is thick with hatred. “You may be wearing one, but you’re not a man, angel.”

Dean would be cringing if that voice were directed at him, but Castiel’s lips tilt up into a slight, fond smile as it continues to look at Dean. The expression feels strangely familiar—almost intimate, as though they’re sharing a joke Dean can’t recall. The angel’s voice bears a trace of humor as it replies, “I’m well aware of my shortcomings.”

Growling, Sam-as-Sammael steps directly in front of the angel. Dean’s line of sight is finally disrupted and he turns his face away immediately, shutting his eyes so that he can’t become trapped again. He doesn’t like the way the angel makes him feel inside—as though he can be better. As though he can be more than just Sam-as-Sammael’s pet. As though, maybe, he was once worth something.

“I’m going to tear you apart,” Sammael’s voice whispers across Dean’s self-imposed darkness. “Get a nice, big crowd to watch me do it.”

Dean can hear other demons hurrying toward them down the hall now—footsteps, and slithering, and a rustling sound that heralds the arrival of an immense, beetle-shaped demon—and he makes himself as small as possible against the wall. Mingled in with the other mutterings, he catches a familiar, maddening gibber and knows that the cloud-shaped demon has come as well.

“Ta’vrisa grek trnvranikt.” Sammael’s voice, commanding.

After a brief pause, the sound of the demons moves away again—toward the door. Although Dean still has his eyes shut and Castiel isn’t making a sound, he can sense the angel’s departure with them. His soul, pitiful as it is, sits heavier in his body for its absence. Sam-as-Sammael is still here, though—Dean can feel his keeper through their connection—and when the echoing boom of the door slamming shut again fades, he comes over to stand in front of Dean.

Sam-as-Sammael doesn’t touch Dean. Doesn’t speak. He just stands there waiting.

After a few minutes, Dean swallows and opens his eyes. Sam-as-Sammael is looking down at him, and if he can’t match the kindness or the love in the angel’s gaze, there’s still something there that catches beneath Dean’s ribcage and tugs. He pushes up onto his knees and Sam-as-Sammael’s hand twitches by his side. It’s a faint movement, but Dean has become good at reading Sam-as-Sammael’s body and he recognizes it for the permission it is. Letting his eyes fall shut again, he leans forward and slides his cheek against his keeper’s hand.

“Good boy,” Sam-as-Sammael says. His voice is huskier than normal—residual anger, maybe. For once, Dean isn’t afraid. He knows it isn’t directed at him.

For several minutes, Sam-as-Sammael trails his fingers through Dean’s hair. It’s gentle. Peaceful.

“I don’t remember you,” Sam-as-Sammael announces finally. “I tasted your memories, but I still— _I_ don’t remember, and it isn’t going to change anything, do you understand?”

Yes, Dean understands. He understands that Sam-as-Sammael is still going to drive rings into his skin tomorrow—that he will be casually cruel with both Dean’s heart and body. He understands that he is still stupid and ugly, personal angel notwithstanding. He is not loved, but he is needed, and he understands that as well.

But Dean also understands there there’s a part of his keeper—that shadowy, wafer-thin Sam part—that wishes things could change.

Inside Sam-as-Sammael there’s a voice so soft and timid that the not-man probably isn’t even aware of it. That voice has been whispering to him in his dreams. It has been urging him to scour the earth in search of something he can’t remember—something he can’t define. The results of that search are piled high in rooms beneath their feet, and Dean is all too familiar with his keeper’s obsessive need to _know_ , to remember.

Maybe that last, fragile bit of Sammy has been looking for Dean all this time without even knowing it.

Turning his head to the side, Dean dares to kiss the inside of his keeper’s wrist. He can taste Sam-as-Sammael’s pulse racing against his lips before his keeper pulls away. When the not-man speaks, his voice has gone distant and cold.

“Wait for me in the bedroom. I’ll be up as soon as I’ve taken care of the angel.”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Dean doesn’t go to the bedroom. He goes to the tower.

As he climbs the stairs, the blue frosting his mind dulls any qualms he might have had over this disobedience, which is his first. The frost crept in quickly once he was alone, had covered him completely before he finished crossing the great hall. The color is cool and soothing, and it leaves a sweet taste in his mouth, like hope.

Dean enters the tower and walks over to the window without hesitation.

The slave pens have been turned out to produce an audience for Sam-as-Sammael’s display. Demons dot the perimeter—both as eager spectators and as guards. No one notices Dean’s figure appear in the high, distant window. No one is able to tear their eyes from the angel for that long.

Castiel lies on its back on the ground. Stripped of its strange clothing, the angel is as pale and unmarked as Dean thought it would be. Despite Sam-as-Sammael’s taunts only minutes before, Castiel does possess a cock: its penis lies limp and small against its left thigh. For the first time, its wings are clearly visible—speared flat against the dirt to either side of it and leaking smoke.

Sam-as-Sammael is currently busy pulling Castiel’s entrails from the hole he cut in the angel’s abdomen and twining them around both spears like garlands.

The angel isn’t crying. It isn’t screaming. Instead, miraculously, it smiles as Dean looks down on it.

 **Dean,** Castiel’s voice whispers in his head.

The word carries with it a warming wind, tinted with the clean scent of flowers, and the wind blows the blue frost away. Dean is suddenly, terrifyingly aware of his disobedience—Sam-as-Sammael will be _furious_ —but although his stomach twists and his legs have begun to shake he doesn’t move. He can’t tear himself away from the sight of the angel’s torment below.

 _I did that,_ he thinks. _My fault._

It isn’t a thought that’s meant to be shared, but Castiel seems to hear him anyway.

 **You must not blame yourself for my fate. This path was of my own choosing.**

The angel frightened Dean, it took him from Sammy once and tried to do so again, but he still finds himself weeping. **I called him, I—I did this.**

 **No.** Castiel’s voice comes back as firm as ever, although now that he has finished his preparations, Sam-as-Sammael has gotten down to work. **You are not responsible for Sammael’s anger. When he and I last met, there were things that I ... should not have said or done. I acted foolishly then, in a manner I’m not proud of.**

Maybe so, but Dean knows that the ferocity of Sam-as-Sammael’s response isn’t due to some centuries-old grudge. This is about _him_.

 **I’m sorry,** Dean says, choking on his tears. **I’m so sorry.**

 **I die a martyr’s death, Dean,** Castiel answers. Its wings shudder uncontrollably as Sam-as-Sammael begins to peel the veins from one skinless foot. **There is no greater joy for my kind. And having you with me ... it helps.**

There’s silence for a time, as Sam-as-Sammael continues his work and the angel’s body jerks. Dean cries until he can’t cry anymore and then, sniffling, wipes his eyes with the back of one hand.

 **I’m sorry,** Castiel says abruptly.

 **For what?**

 **I failed you. I ... cared too much. I should have left you sleeping until it was time to come home, but I ... did not like the thought of being without your voice for so long. And you were angry, when you woke, and because I—because I was flawed, it upset me and I left you alone. When I came back, you were gone.**

Dean doesn’t remember any of that, but the angel’s words resonate within him anyway. They sound just like Dean's thoughts do whenever he thinks about his Sammy.

 **You loved me,** he says, raising one hand and resting it on the window.

 **Yes.** Castiel sounds relieved to have been caught out.

 **Did I ...** Dean can’t finish the thought, but the angel answers anyway.

 **Sometimes I thought you did. You might have, in time, if you had been able to let your brother go.** But there’s something in Castiel's voice that sounds wistful, as though it knows Dean would never have been able to make that concession.

It’s that longing that does it, a feeling which is so like what Dean feels for Sam-as-Sammael that it might as well be the same emotion. Suddenly, it isn’t an angel down there. Isn’t a thing.

It’s _Castiel_ , who loves Dean well enough to have continued looking when all of his brothers left or turned aside from their duty.

Dean’s knees buckle and he drops to the floor. Leaning his forehead against the window, he lets the tears come again—softer this time, but more genuine. Aching.

 **Don’t cry for me, Dean. Please.**

He tries. He scrunches his eyes and he grimaces and still an occasional, slow tear slips past him. **Does it hurt?** he asks.

 **There are worse things than pain,** Castiel replies, which Dean thinks isn’t an answer at first. Then his throat pulls tight and he clenches his jaw.

Of _course_ it fucking hurts: Dean's body is aching and he's all the way up here, just watching.

 **I don’t have long,** Castiel continues as Sam-as-Sammael moves from his legs to his torso. Frustrated by the angel’s continued silence, the demon that used to be Dean’s brother is getting creative. **When I die, I will be allowed a final prayer. I would pray for you, if you would let me.**

Dean thinks of his own prayers, all of them directed to the winged and tailed demon below and none of them answered. **What good would it do?**

 **Always doubting, Dean,** Castiel responds. Dean thinks there might be a hint of fond warmth in the angel’s voice, but he can’t be sure. **Can you never take anything on faith?**

 **I’m sorry.**

 **Don’t be. It’s good to know that some things never change.**

On the dying field below, Sam has finally gotten creative enough to elicit a scream. The sound ripples through Dean’s flesh and finds his heart, where it lodges and sends sharp, jabbing pains through his chest. When it comes again, though, Castiel’s voice is as gentle and sure as ever.

 **Tell me what you want. Anything.**

It’s a simple demand.

 **I want Sammy back.**

 **Believe me, Dean, I would return him if I could, but that’s beyond even an angel’s final prayer.** Another scream echoes up from below, and Castiel’s voice carries a new tension as he continues, **Anything else. I could give you the strength to be Sammael’s equal, if that would make you happy.**

Happiness. Dean has never considered that for himself, has known it to be out of reach. It seems even more unobtainable now that Sammy has been denied to him.

But if he can’t have happiness, there’s still something that he desperately wants.

He thinks of having all of his memories again—a past and an identity. Thinks of being able to remember what Sam used to be like: _his_ Sammy, not the wisp in his dreams or the ruin below. The hollow ache inside of him—that ache that runs deeper than anything Sam-as-Sammael can ever do to his body—would finally mend. He would be whole again.

But then he thinks of his one-sided conversation with Sam-as-Sammael in the hallway—that unspoken longing, that unacknowledged regret. He thinks of room upon room in the basement below filled with broken relics, and of Sam-as-Sammael’s desperation to have some small bit of the world Before for himself.

If Dean gets his memories back, even if he shares with Sam-as-Sammael, it won’t change anything. The memories will be his, not his keeper’s. They won’t mean anything more to Sam-as-Sammael than a series of pictures flashed on a wall. They won’t fulfill his longing or soothe his desperation.

 **Quickly,** Castiel prods, and for the first time there’s a hint of pain in his voice.

Dean looks down at the scene below him again and vomits. He manages to turn his head to the side, manages not to get any on himself, but there was never any chance of stopping it. Not with the sight of Sam-as-Sammael’s most recent diversion burned into Dean’s mind.

 **Dean,** Castiel’s voice comes, faltering.

 **I want to be able to make Sam remember who he is,** Dean finally replies as he wipes his mouth with the back of one, shaking hand. **I want to be able to make him remember me.**

 **Done,** Castiel agrees immediately. And then, as another, desperate scream comes from below, he rasps, **Turn away, Dean. Turn away and don’t look.**

Dean can’t stand, body still shaking with the image of Castiel spread out on the ground below, so he crawls away from the window. **I’m sorry,** he cries, and Castiel asked him not to but he can’t keep the tears in any more than he could keep himself from vomiting before. **I’m so sorry.**

 **Don’t worry about me, Dean. You’re going to be fine, I’m happy.** The press of the angel’s mind against his changes, soothing, and the tension leaches from Dean’s muscles.

 **What are you doing?**

 **These are memories you don’t need to carry,** Castiel answers, and Dean shudders with relief as the images of the last hour are scrubbed away.

 **Thank you,** he breathes. **Thank you.**

 **I have—I have a final request.** Castiel is panting now, his voice fading in and out like a ghost. **You used to—used to call me—Cas—sometimes—could you—I want to h-hear—before I—**

 **Cas,** Dean thinks. **Cas.**

He’s turned away, head hanging and eyes squeezed tightly shut, but the flare from the angel’s passing is still bright enough to blind him. Dean flinches mindlessly and then power slams into him with the force of a solar flare and everything goes white.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean wakes with Sam-as-Sammael shaking him, Sam-as-Sammael’s face filling his field of vision, Sam-as-Sammael’s golden eyes intent and furious, Sam-as-Sammael’s hair brushing his cheeks and lips and forehead. He hurts everywhere, feels how he probably would have if the building managed to fall on him. Most alarming of all, though, there’s a brilliant warmth filling up all of the hollow places in his mind and casting white light over his thoughts.

“Beauty,” Sam-as-Sammael says, putting a bloodied hand _(Castiel’s blood, and still warm)_ on his cheek. “Come on, focus. Look at me.”

But Dean is too busy looking inward to obey, staring at the terrifying light inside his head. It seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, and he doesn’t know what it is, what it _means_.

The slap of Sam-as-Sammael’s power makes Dean’s body twitch in his keeper’s arms and Dean blinks rapidly, jerked from his mind by the sharper, fresh pain. That pain vanishes as Sam-as-Sammael’s power releases him a moment later, but the deep-seated ache in his bones lingers.

“Better,” Sam-as-Sammael breathes as Dean focuses on him. But he doesn’t _look_ as though he thinks it’s better: frown deepening as he digs his fingers into Dean’s cheeks and tilts his face up. “That dickless slave better not have sealed you up again,” he mutters, and then his mind descends over Dean’s like a lightning storm.

The terrifying light snuffs out immediately. It isn’t gone, though, not ... not exactly. Dean can still feel it lingering at the edges of his mind. No, the light is just hiding from Sam-as-Sammael as he rifles through Dean’s thoughts: lifting each one and examining it in turn before moving on to the next. It’s invasive, being explored like this, and a little painful, and Dean’s eyelids flutter as the world slips in and out of focus.

Finally the lightning lifts, and his keeper sits back on his haunches. Sam-as-Sammael doesn’t look any happier than he did before his examination. His brow remains furrowed, his jaw tight. “What the fuck did that son of a bitch do to you?” he growls, searching Dean’s face as though he can find the answer written there.

For a moment, Dean has no idea what his keeper is talking about. Then he remembers—being drawn to the window, Castiel’s screams, Castiel’s prayer. He remembers the white light that crashed into him when the angel died, and he understands what the brilliance is for.

It hurts to move, but he reaches up to grip one of Sam-as-Sammael’s arms anyway. His mouth is suddenly dry, his heartbeat stuttering in his chest.

 _Remember,_ Dean thinks, trying to summon the light again. _Come on,_ remember.

But the hollows of his mind remain dark and empty, and Sam-as-Sammael is frowning down at Dean’s hand on his arm with the same hostility as always—with perhaps a touch of disappoint that Dean hasn’t learned this lesson by now, that he doesn’t know better than to touch when he hasn’t been given permission.

The angel’s prayer failed: nothing has changed. Sammy is gone forever, he isn’t coming back, and Dean might as well accept it.

There’s only Sammael now. Only the demon.

With a mute, hiccupping sob, Dean lets his hand fall free. He’s going to be punished for his presumption, for _touching_ , but right now he doesn’t care. It didn’t work. Castiel tried, Dean knows he did, but ... it didn’t work.

Turning his head to the side, he starts to cry.

Sammael’s sudden grip on Dean’s chin is harsh. “You better not be crying for that overgrown pigeon.”

Dean is, a little. But mostly he’s crying for his Sammy—for everything he has lost. Everything they both lost. He feels like he has enough tears in him to drown a mountain, as though he could weep for years and not express the mournful, lonely ache in his heart. But his tears can’t bring Sammy back, and Sammael clearly doesn’t like him crying, so he does his best to stifle his tears.

Sammael’s touch immediately gentles.

“I know, Beauty, I know. You had a big day, huh? I’ll bet you’re just a little overexcited.”

Dean nods, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain welling in his throat. He failed. His last shot at getting his Sammy back and he screwed it up, he lost the light before he could use it.

Sammael drops his hand from Dean’s chin to stroke his throat, smearing blood across the thin scar. “Looks like I marked you after all,” he murmurs as he tips his thumb up and scratches along the raised ridge of tissue. Dean swallows against the press of his keeper’s thumb and flushes through his sorrow. It’s an intimate sensation: throat working against the weight of Sammael’s fingertips.

“It doesn’t count, though,” Sammael says, frowning. The bitterness in the demon’s voice is echoed in the sharp flap of his wings. “It doesn’t count if I don’t remember doing it.”

That’s Dean’s fault, Dean’s failing, and his tears, which have almost tapered to a stop, come faster again. As his keeper’s fingers lift from his throat, he rolls onto his side, facing away from Sammael, and presses his face against his forearm. After a couple of moments, a hand slides into place over the handprint on his upturned shoulder.

“This is _his_ ,” Sammael breathes. There’s a hint of a growl in his voice; more than a hint of anger in the tremble of his fingers against Dean’s skin. “His mark.”

Dean shakes his head as best as he can in this position. It isn’t a denial—Castiel’s hand fit the burn, of course it’s the angel’s mark—but he recognizes the possessive, greedy edge to his keeper’s voice and he’s been here long enough to know what it heralds. Shaking his head is the best show of pleading Dean can manage right now. It obviously isn’t good enough, because Sammael’s fingers are suddenly in Dean’s hair instead of on his shoulder.

Wrenching Dean’s head back, Sammael hisses, “I’m going to figure out how to get rid of it. I don’t care how long it takes me; it’s coming off. He doesn’t own you, _I_ do. Do you hear me? You’re fucking _mine_!”

Sobbing harder, Dean nods. He’s Sammael’s, he knows that. He knew it when he made his decision in the first floor hallway. He knew it when Castiel came to get him in the basement. Dean _knows_ whom he belongs to, he’s always known it, and he doesn’t regret it.

But he remembers from the lightning dream how much it hurt to have his past lifted from his skin, even before his body learned to resist change. If anyone can erase the handprint, it’s Sammael, but the process isn’t going to be quick. It isn’t going to be painless.

“Now, I’ve had a really fucking bad afternoon,” Sammael purrs as he slides his tail across Dean’s stomach and between his legs. “Why don’t you see what you can do to make it better?”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

They way Sammael rips Dean’s shoulder to shreds during their coupling is maybe accidental, but probably not. Either way, it hurts, and when Sammael notices how quickly the skin is healing he drags Dean down two flights of stairs to their bedroom and tosses him on the bed. Dean’s shoulder is completely healed by the time Sammael climbs back on top of him, but it doesn’t stay that way long.

This time, instead of just tearing at the scar with his fingers and teeth, Sammael takes a knife from the nightstand and cuts the flesh away from the bone. He fucks Dean like that, knife set to Dean’s shoulder so that he can keep the wound fresh as he pumps in and out. Blood spills out across the sheets and soaks into the mattress, and within minutes Dean is delirious and lightheaded with both pain and blood loss. But he turns his head to the side and spreads his legs and takes it.

He failed Sammael, after all. He deserves to be punished.

At first, the meat of Dean’s shoulder regenerates itself as quickly as Sammael cuts it away, but gradually the rate of healing slows. He only has so much energy to work with before his stores become depleted, before his body has to take a breath. Finally, the meat of his shoulder, worn out, stops rebuilding itself. A heartbeat later the hunger wakes, more ravenous than ever before.

Dean’s back arches with the force of it, his mouth snapping open as he sucks in a rattling breath. Sammael thrusts in one more time, roaring, and then pulls out and shoves Dean off the bed and onto the floor.

Lost as he is in the burning need, Dean still tries to brace himself for impact. He can’t make his left arm work without the muscles in his shoulder, though, and his right isn’t strong enough to halt his momentum on its own. Tumbling across the floor, he slams into the wall shoulder-first, knocking his exposed collarbone against unyielding stone.

Darkness takes him.

Dean wakes some time later, even more ravenous than before and hurting. His shoulder throbs and burns and pulses where the flesh has been torn away and a quick, nauseating glance tells him that he didn’t heal at all while he was unconscious. He needs energy to fix himself, needs to sate the hunger. In an agonized daze, he lifts his head and scans the room for his keeper.

Sammael is standing in the doorway, watching him. At Dean’s pleading gaze, he opens his mouth and, in a tightly controlled voice, says, “You can call all you want, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to help put that fucking mark back on your shoulder.”

Dean’s voiceless sobs aren’t anywhere near loud enough to drown out the sound of the door slamming shut as his keeper leaves him there, alone and pain-wracked and burning.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

He heals anyway.

It takes longer—takes what feels like forever, and every second consumed by the burning hunger—but he heals. His muscle grows back, and then his skin, reforming in that same tight, shiny handprint. By then, of course, Dean isn’t rational enough to appreciate it, lost in a red haze of _needSammaelwantnowplease_. Sammael has never denied him this long, and their bond is stronger now, and Dean struggles with himself—fights to breathe using someone else’s lungs, to drink with someone else’s mouth.

Sensation, when he can make anything out beyond the hunger, comes back slowly. Touch returns first—heavy, hot drag of something moving against him, inside him. Then sound—panting breath, moans. Then sight—his own hand fisting a clutch of bedding, the wall beyond, a blur of wings. Finally, as he and Sammael lie drenched in sweat and come, thought.

His body is whole again, but he still aches everywhere—that same, bone-deep hurt that doesn’t actually have anything to do with the fact that his keeper just spent four hours fucking him on every surface in the room. Dean stirs, and then winces, and Sammael’s hands are on him immediately: hovering, skirting over his body.

“What’s wrong? I fucked you, didn’t I? You should be—you should be better now.”

Dean nods—he _is_ better, this ache is something that Sammael can’t touch—but Sammael pushes into him again anyway. It’s slow this time, almost gentle, and Sammael can’t seem to leave Dean’s mouth alone. Keeps kissing him, stealing Dean’s breath and replacing it with his own, and this is why Dean stayed. For this tender shadow of his brother.

Sammael climaxes with a shudder that looks painful but doesn’t withdraw. With his cock still nestled deep inside Dean, he continues to lick and nip at Dean’s lips.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers between kisses. “I’m sorry I left you like that, Beauty, but I—you’re mine. Do you understand that? You’re _mine_.”

Dean understands. It’s one of the few things he doesn’t need his lost memory to confirm.

“Touch me,” Sammael breathes. “Oh, fuck, touch me back.”

With a great deal of effort _(he’s exhausted, wants to sleep for a week)_ , Dean raises one hand and touches his keeper’s hair. It’s so soft, like a lion’s mane, and Sammael makes a tiny, hurt sound, like despair.

“I can’t stand seeing his mark on you,” he confesses, burying his face against Dean’s neck.

 _I know,_ Dean thinks, and strokes his keeper to sleep.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It takes over three months for the ache to fade.

Dean passes the time much as he did before Castiel came—with the exception of one memorable week when Sammael makes his second attempt to rid Dean’s shoulder of the hated handprint. Whatever spell he uses to tear the skin from Dean’s body is thorough. Whatever’s in the liquid he splashes over Dean’s shoulder in the wake of the spell does, indeed, retard the healing process. As a temporary solution, it seems to calm Sammael slightly, although Dean is thankful that his keeper adjusts the spell to affect a smaller area for his ‘touch-ups’.

On the day he wakes up to find the last of the lingering ache gone, Dean celebrates with his customary morning coupling and then heads down to the basement. Now that Dean’s mind has been opened to Sammael, his keeper has already devoured everything that Dean knows about the artifacts, but he keeps sending Dean downstairs anyway. Dean suspects Sammael is hoping that, by looking at the objects, he’ll jog something else loose. It’s a futile attempt, of course—Dean can’t ever give Sammael what he’s really looking for, can’t make Sammael remember _him_ —but it appeases his keeper and it isn’t as though Dean has anything better to do with his time.

As he trots down the final flight of stairs leading into the basement, Dean rolls his shoulder. The pull of slowly healing skin itches, and when he glances over he can make out the faint outline of a hand. Which means that in another couple of days Sammael is going to strip the flesh again.

 _Don’t think about it,_ he advises himself as he moves down the hallway, but it’s too late now: the pit in his stomach isn’t going to fill until the dreaded moment has come and gone. Dean never would have thought it that afternoon in the tower, but he’s actually looking forward to the day when Sammael figures out how to permanently remove the scar. No matter how much the process hurts, it has to be better than having the skin stripped from his shoulder every other week.

Opening the door to his current workroom, Dean heads inside and goes to work. For the first few hours, he’s too preoccupied by thoughts of his shoulder to pay much attention to the artifacts, but the familiar routine eventually settles him enough to concentrate on the task at hand.

The dirty, rusted objects he spends the majority of his day sifting through are fragments of his past—they’re fragments of Sammael’s past—and, as usual, they’re fascinating. Was this metal shard part of a machine? Did this piece of glass belong in a light fixture? Did this stiff piece of fabric used to be part of some woman’s dress? And what about the strange material he comes across so often—something stiff enough to retain a shape yet flexible enough to bend if he exerts a little pressure? What is it? Why does it come in so many different colors?

Setting a pink bowl made of the stuff aside, Dean reaches forward and picks up a spoked bit of metal instead. He rubs his fingers around the edges of the flat metal star, frowning, and tries to imagine what it might once have been. All but pain-free for the first time in months, he slips deeper into his mind as he turns the metal star over. His fragmentary memories are as useless as always, of course, so he turns his attention deeper, prodding at the empty hollows inside of him.

The bloom of light isn’t any less terrifying the second time around.

Dean is already dropping the metal star when he feels it start to heat in his hands. The artifact clatters to the floor as he scrambles away, eyes wide with fear. It seems to be glowing now, reflecting the same illumination that is filling the hollows inside of him.

For several seconds, the light _(from the metal or his mind or both)_ swells and it’s all he can see. Then the brilliance fades, dampening to nothing but a subtle glow illuminating his thoughts.

In the place where the metal star lay, instead there’s a ... a machine. The machine would stand waist high on Dean if he hadn’t been knocked on his ass by the light’s return, and is a confusion of bright blue metal bars and slender tubes and two large wheels and a thick, black triangle-shaped wedge rising from one of the bars like a lookout post.

Dean flicks his eyes over it—where did it come from? is it dangerous? is it a weapon?—and then freezes as they catch on a familiar outline down low by one of the wheels. The metal star is one in a set now, the smallest of five—at least he _thinks_ it’s the metal star. It’s roughly the same shape and size, which is why it caught his attention in the first place, but this star is gleaming, with not so much as a speck of rust. It looks new.

His first coherent thought is, _I ruined Sammael’s artifact._ Despite the warm glow in his mind, he feels cold suddenly and his stomach trembles.

Sammael is going to be angry.

Sammael is going to punish him.

Turning away from the blue machine, Dean takes a stumbling step toward the door—he has to get out of here before he ruins anything else—and steps on the pink bowl he was examining before everything went wrong. The bowl cracks open and then the pieces slide out from beneath his foot, throwing him off balance.

Dean tries to catch himself, he really does. But terror makes him overcompensate and instead he topples over in the opposite direction and crashes into a pile of artifacts. Half a dozen bits of broken metal and glass and ceramic lacerate his skin, but the stings are unimportant in comparison with the knowledge that he’s _breaking things_.

Flailing out with his hands, Dean tries to find the floor in order to push up. But he can’t seem to touch anything but artifacts, and that light in his head is giving off rapid-fire, blinding flashes, and the artifacts are writhing beneath his hands, they’re _changing_.

Whatever’s happening, it’s using up Dean’s energy reserves faster than healing does: strength is running out of him like blood, like his throat is freshly cut and pouring rivers, and then, with a final, blinding flare, he’s plunged into a lake of warm, white light. It’s silent here, and still, and Dean releases his fear and his pain and his exhaustion and just lets himself float.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

He’s staring at the ceiling.

Dean blinks once, twice, and then a third, magic time and remembers what happened. He’s too tired to feel any real alarm, although he’s sure that will come in time. For now, though, he shuts his eyes and concentrates on sitting up. After a brief delay, his body grudgingly obeys. His head spins alarmingly as he straightens, and then starts to pound, and he presses one hand to it and takes slow, measured breaths while waiting for it to stop.

Eventually it does and he opens his eyes.

It’s even worse than he thought. The blue machine is still there, but it has been joined by a bewildering tumble of new-looking objects around him—objects that Dean is certain used to be artifacts before he crashed into the pile.

 _What did I do?_ he thinks, feeling smaller and more confused than ever as he looks at a small, rounded metal thing with two slits in its surface and a long, black tail running out from one end. The tail ends in two metal prongs that remind him of lightning, which makes him think of light, which makes him look, startled, into his own mind.

The hollows are dark again. Empty and aching.

Still, he thinks he understands what just happened now—at least a little, anyway. He used the power given to him by Castiel’s final prayer. He doesn’t know how he did it, or why the power chose now to activate, but it’s the only explanation that makes any kind of sense. Resting his hands on his thighs, Dean frowns.

That power was supposed to be able to make Sammael remember, not transform incomprehensible artifacts into even more incomprehensible objects. That doesn’t mean that Castiel made a mistake, though. In fact, Dean can’t even bring himself to consider the possibility. No matter how much agony he was in at the time, the angel wouldn’t have erred. Not in something this important.

Which means, doesn’t it, that there’s some kind of link between what the light did to the artifacts and what it’s supposed to do to Sam.

Slowly—wary of his weakness and his tender head—Dean drags himself to his feet and makes his way over to the blue machine. For a long time he stands there, looking at it. Looking at the metal star.

 _What if,_ he asks himself finally, slowly. _What if the star always came from this machine? Or something like it?_

Could there be a power strong enough to make a mindless object remember what it used to be?

Staggered by the possibility, Dean wanders around the room looking at all the strange, renewed artifacts. He still doesn’t know what any of them are. Worse, he’s beginning to realize that he doesn’t know how to _explain_ them.

Sammael may want to know about the past—he may, deep down, long for his own lost memories. But Dean has been here long enough to understand that this mystery is going to terrify his keeper. Sammael is going to rip through Dean’s mind like a hurricane, and if he can’t find the answer he wants there—he won’t, of course he won’t, the light hid from him before, it’ll do so again—he’s going to drag Dean back down to the torture chamber and start trying to convince him to explain just what, exactly, happened to the artifacts.

That’s the best-case scenario.

Worst case, Sammael will take one look at the changed artifacts and _know_. He’ll know what Dean did, know _how_ , know whom the power is really meant for. The way he is now, Sammael isn’t going to see that as anything other than a threat.

 _He can’t know,_ Dean thinks, and then, on the heels of that, _Why didn’t it_ work _on him?_

Swallowing nervously, he eases forward a step and reaches for a scrap of metal that tumbled loose from the pile. Holding it in his hands, he squints at it and waits for something to happen. The bit of metal sits on his palm and does nothing.

 _Go on, do something,_ Dean thinks at it. _Remember._

Nothing happens.

Sweating lightly with desperation, Dean fumbles into the hollows of his mind in search of the white light. He made it shine before; he must be able to call that warm glow back again. He just ... he just needs to try hard enough. Try as he might, though, the light refuses to come, and the bit of metal in his hand remains a scrap.

Grimacing, Dean turns suddenly and hurls the artifact against the far wall. He’s crying, weakly, and his head hurts. Pressing his eyes shut, he pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand.

Where’s an instruction book when you need it?

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Dean hides the rememberings beneath piles of artifacts.

If he’s lucky, Sam won’t be down to pick through his treasures until Dean has figured out how to use the newfound power. If he’s less lucky, then Sammael is going to tear him apart looking for the how and the why.

Dean is very carefully not thinking about what his keeper will do if he finds out and _understands_.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

In bed that night, Dean hangs onto the wooden slats of the headboard while Sammael fucks into him from behind. A loop of his keeper’s tail is wrapped tightly around his balls, keeping him hard and panting while the tip strokes up and down the length of his aching cock. He knows that there isn’t going to be any release until his keeper is good and ready to offer it—maybe not at all tonight, Sammael is in a puckish mood—but he can’t help straining after it anyway.

Leaning forward, Sammael drapes himself over Dean’s back and bites down on the raw flesh of his shoulder. The sudden, surprising burst of pain rips a voiceless rasp from Dean. Sammael runs his tongue over the skin in his mouth, wetting it, and then lifts his head again to pant into Dean’s ear. The loop of his tail around Dean’s balls first loosens and then falls away and is replaced by his hand. Which means that he’s going to let Dean finish after all.

 _Thank you,_ Dean thinks, relieved.

“I had a breakthrough today, Beauty,” Sammael murmurs as he rolls Dean’s aching sacs in his hand. “Tomorrow we’re getting rid of that mark once and for all.”

Riding the cusp of completion, Dean tosses his head back in a gasp for air that isn’t coming. Fear of the fresh agonies Sammael’s breakthrough will bring cuts through his chest and mind, but the hunger is still in control and his body surges toward climax. Squeezing his eyes shut against the stinging pressure of tears, he curls one hand from the headboard and fumbles behind him for his keeper’s thigh. His hand closes on firm muscle and he tries, desperately, to make his mind light up again.

In the gasping clench of climax that shakes him, there isn’t even a spark.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It takes Dean two weeks to heal from Sammael’s ‘breakthrough’ _(which turns out to be anything but, of course it does)_ , but as soon as he can walk, he makes his slow, painful way back down to the basement to begin his own round of experiments.

Learning to use the power granted to him by Castiel’s prayer is almost as difficult as making sense of his disjointed memories. It functions almost like a muscle, Dean comes to understand, but one that refuses to grant him conscious control. Some days, the glow comes alive the moment he enters the room and everything he touches transforms beneath his hands. Other days, it remains as dark as a doused fire. When the light comes to him, he’s always exhausted after—a weariness proportionate to how many rememberings he has made during the day.

Slowly, though—too slowly for him to have noticed it happening if he hadn’t been looking so closely, if it hadn’t been so very important—Dean learns to twist his thoughts just _so_ and make the light come. He can’t always make it bright enough to use—some days he manages no more than the quiet glow of starlight—but he senses that will come in time.

Time. It’s something Dean never paid much attention to before, but suddenly can’t stop thinking about. Minutes, hours, days, weeks: they all shoot past unbearably fast and, sooner or later, Sammael is going to come up with another theory about how to remove the handprint from his shoulder. More importantly _(and more likely sooner rather than later with every passing day)_ , Sammael is going to stop by for a visit.

There are too many rememberings to hide. Dean has placed his hands on too many artifacts with the light brilliant and shining in his mind, and now they’re piled high in almost every room. He can’t even imagine what Sammael would do if he saw them—and, of course, soon enough he won’t have to imagine because he’ll be living it.

 _Not if you figure this shit out first,_ a gruff, half-familiar voice in his mind points out. _Now stop whining and get your ass in gear._

And Dean swallows, and closes his eyes, and concentrates.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

In the end, it isn’t Sammael who comes at all: it’s the cloud-shaped demon.

Dean turns around one afternoon to the sound of the door opening and it’s there, already gibbering. Most likely, it just came down to play with him a little—it found a way down into the basement months ago—but of course that doesn’t matter now, with evidence of Dean’s transgression spread around him in bright, wholesome piles. The cloud-shaped demon’s gibbering cuts off immediately as its blind eyes widen, taking in Dean’s frozen, horrified expression, the piles of rememberings on one side of the room, the waiting artifacts on the other.

For a single, terrifying heartbeat, everything is still.

Then Dean sprints forward, meaning to dive beneath the cloud-shaped demon and out of this death trap. He’s almost at the door when the demon finally shakes off its shock and snaps tendrils of power around him, lifting him from his feet and slamming him back against the far wall. Dean struggles against its hold, uselessly, and thinks for a brief, desperate moment of using their connection to call for Sammael.

But bringing Sammael running would just doom him faster, and he can’t do that to himself. Let the cloud-shaped demon call his keeper down to witness Dean’s crime; Dean isn’t going to stick his own head in the noose. No matter how much he wishes that it would just be over, that the lightnings would fall already so that he can stop feeling that nauseating, painful tension in his stomach.

The demon drifts closer, lifting rememberings and then inspecting them briefly before breaking them on the floor or against a wall. Even in the midst of his despairing panic, it hurts to see his work undone like that and Dean’s struggles redouble. The demon isn’t saying anything, but he can sense its amusement in the malicious curl of smoky tendrils. It keeps picking the brightest objects, the prettiest—one delicate, lovely figurine of a long-legged bird made out of pink, sparkling glass is shattered to fine dust in its grasp.

This is why the world is so broken, why so few artifacts have survived intact. The demons and their inherent love for destruction. Their hatred of anything that holds even the slightest shred of beauty. Clenching his jaw, Dean shuts his eyes against the destruction and turns his face away as best as he can.

Apparently, destroying the rememberings isn’t as fun without an audience, because almost immediately a subtle shift of air tells Dean that the demon is right in front of him. A moment later, there’s a brush against his mind—like oil or pond scum on water—and he jerks reflexively. This time, when the demon gibbers, words are mingled with the madness.

Naughty, the demon whispers in his head. Naughty naughty pet. Sammael will tear you to pieces, he will feed your squishy bits to the hounds, but maybe Ornias can have your mind before Sammael turns your thinky thoughts to spongy goo. Such games to play before Sammael breaks his toy, so much fun with the naughty pet.

Dean knows enough about a demon’s idea of ‘fun’ to know that it’s going to be anything but. He would rather be punished for a year by Sammael—a year on the rack, a year of red, wet delights—than have to endure a single minute of Ornias’ ‘play’. But he has worse things to worry about than being given to the cloud-shaped demon as a chew toy.

Because he _has_ been naughty. He knew Sammael wouldn’t like what he has been doing, but he persevered anyway. And in Sammael’s eyes, what Dean is trying to do is akin to murder, isn’t it? Murdering the demon to get his brother back.

Dean hasn’t been able to think of how Sammael would respond to that knowledge—he hasn’t dared. Every time he got close, his mind has just ... shut down on him. But Ornias just ripped all of his blissful ignorance away because it’s right, of course it’s right, that’s exactly what his keeper will do.

All the not-man needs, after all, is Dean’s body. Something to fondle and fuck and enjoy. Dean’s mind has amused Sammael for a time, and he’ll be less entertaining when the barbs of his keeper’s words cease to cut, but Dean has no doubt that the not-man will break it in a heartbeat if he looks like a threat. And his mind, as has already been proved by the countless, persistent holes in his memory, can’t regenerate the way his body does.

When Dean’s mind is destroyed, it will be for keeps.

 _No,_ he thinks frantically. He has paused his struggles in the midst of his realization, but he begins to fight again now, straining against the demon’s power hard enough that he can feel his muscles tearing and healing and tearing again in a vicious, agonizing cycle.

Naughty pets get whippings, the demon taunts. They get slicings and skinnings. They get their naughty, naughty thinkings all scrambled and swirled.

Dean can’t fight the demon’s hold. He can’t escape. Everything is over except his punishment, which isn’t going to be anything but an execution of everything he is, every last shred of memory and thought that has been left to him. As he sags against the demon’s hold, Dean wonders whether Sammael will leave him enough cognitive ability to figure out how to swallow his keeper’s cock the way he likes. Probably. Wouldn’t do to have a non-functional toy.

The demon is still gibbering at him, but Dean is pulling back into his mind while he still has one to withdraw to. As tears slip down his cheeks, he reaches for the light, for the warmth which was so frightening at first but has become familiar and kind and reassuring. Maybe, if he hugs the light close enough, he can face the end with a little bravery instead of sobbing on his knees.

Light spills through the hollow spaces inside of him, and although it brings all of his loss into sharp relief, the ache is soothing compared to the knowledge of what is to come. Dean feels the brush of air currents over his body as Ornias comes even closer and fans the light to blinding brilliance, as though that will keep the demon at bay.

Just a taste, Ornias says. Just a taste of the naughty pet before we get Sammael, yes. Just break it a little bit, taste its tears ...

Dean has never actually touched the cloud-shaped demon before, but he knows immediately what the damp, shocking sensation slithering over his body is. It’s horrible, worse than being covered by the spiders from so long ago—he’d rip his own skin off if he could, if it would get rid of that wretched, clammy, greasy sensation. The demon slicks across his chest and face, mists down lower to his cock and upper thighs, onto his hands.

The flare is unexpected and shocking. Dean is blinded by it immediately, but he can still feel, can hear the demon’s taunting murmurs morph into panicked cries as it tries to pull free. The sickening sensation lifts from his body along with the demon’s power, dropping him back onto his feet. Ornias is still pulling back, moving away, and Dean reaches after it without thinking, burying his hand in the center of that oily cloud.

Light and energy are pouring from him in a torrent, and Dean never considered this—that his power could touch a demon—and has no idea what’s happening, what it will do, but he knows that it’s hurting Ornias, and frightening it, and that’s enough to keep going. He moves after the demon as it attempts retreat again, keeping his hand buried, and the cloud is changing against his flesh—congealing into something that feels like warm puss. As the puss continues to harden—now sap, now jelly—the tiny, rational corner of Dean’s brain that is still working realizes his danger and he steps back, pulling his hand free just as the flare in his mind burns into a supernova.

There’s an odd, cracking noise that echoes through the room, sounds the way that baseballs do in Dean’s admittedly patchy memory when they’re hit, and he knows what it is, knows that it’s the sound of air being pushed aside as the demon finishes solidifying. There’s a final, despairing shriek in Dean’s head and then Ornias’ mind is ripped away and the light goes out, leaving Dean winded and staring into silent darkness. After a couple of seconds, he realizes that it’s dark because he still has his eyes closed and opens them.

Whatever he expected to see, it isn’t this.

There’s a naked man standing in front of him—red hair like a sunset and eyes just as green as Dean’s own. Some of those imperfect flecks, too, across the bridge of his nose. The man’s mouth is hanging open in a gape of something Dean recognizes as horror. Tears stream from those wide eyes down his cheeks. As Dean watches, the man lets out a sob and drops to his knees before burying his face in his hands.

The redhead—where did he _come_ from?—is gasping something between sobs, and as Dean cautiously crouches beside the man, the gasping turns to recognizable words. “Oh God,” the redhead is saying—just that, just those two words, over and over again.

Dean senses that his immediate danger has passed, and the man sounds like he’s in pain, so he reaches out and rests a hand on his shoulder. The man’s head snaps up and Dean nearly jerks back at the expression twisting his features—anguish and pain and disgust and a burning, sickening hatred that isn’t directed anywhere but inward.

“What have I _done_?” the man chokes out, and through his confusion Dean is beginning to wonder that himself: what has _he_ done? How did this harmless-looking man appear in Ornias’ place? He tries to get an arm around the man—he feels better when Sammael holds him, maybe it will work for the redhead as well—but finds himself pushed away. When he tries again, the man crawls for the door, still weeping.

No, not for the door. For something metallic and shining to the _right_ of the door.

Dean isn’t going to be quick enough, he knows that, but he still scrambles after the man anyway, one hand extended in voiceless protest. When the man uses the knife he claimed, Dean is close enough to be splashed with the arterial spray, but still too distant to stop it from happening.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

After, he uses one of the blankets he remembered out of a stiffened clump of threads to mop up as much of the blood as he can—wipes his own face and chest as well, although he’s still going to have to bathe before Sammael sees him if he wants to avoid questions. When both he and the room are as clean as they’re going to get, he sits down next to the body and looks at it.

The hole in the man’s throat gapes wide—looks like a grin beneath the grimace he’s wearing on his mouth. The man’s eyes are open, lifeless but somehow still sharp with the pain he felt in his final few moments—or maybe Dean is reading that pain from the twist in the redhead’s features, the tear tracks slowly drying on his cheeks. He looks down, remembering the sting of having his own throat cut, and thinks that the pain he reads there has another, deeper source.

This man was in agony before he set knife to skin.

After a moment, Dean reaches out and lays one hand against the youth’s cheek in silent apology.

This is, after all, his fault.

Now that he has had a chance to think, it’s obvious what happened. He used his power on Ornias and, somehow, remembering itself transformed the demon into the redheaded man. Dean thinks he may have known this—that demons were men once, when they were young and new and unspoiled.

He doesn’t mourn the cloud-shaped demon—he can’t—but he feels for this nameless man, who looks far too innocent to have ever been a part of Ornias’ past. What must it have been like for him, to have regained himself—to have remembered who he was supposed to be—with all of the demon’s sins still heavy on his conscience? What must it have been like for an innocent to recall such horrors, such guilt?

Bad enough that the man’s first impulse was of self-destruction.

If Dean ever gains enough control of the light to use it on Sammael, is it going to have a similar effect?

He tries to imagine his keeper’s body changing—all of the demonic markers shriveling away as Sammael dies and Sammy is reborn from the ashes—but reality keeps intruding. The redhead’s contorted face, his ruined neck. The horror and self-hatred still strong in that glassy stare. Sammael’s face isn’t Sammy’s, but Dean can’t recall his brother’s face and so it’s his keeper’s that his imagination paints with those emotions. It’s Sammael’s horror and devastation he sees.

And maybe, despite everything, Dean has come to love the demon a little for himself because that sight hurts almost as badly as the knowledge that he’s going to destroy what he yearns for before he can do more than glimpse it.

Maybe ... maybe he should stop.

Dean’s insides clench unbearably at the thought—at the mere possibility of losing Sammy for good like that—and, for a moment, he struggles with the conflicting desire and need inside of him. Then, with a voiceless groan, he folds himself forward and presses his forehead against the corpse’s chest. He’s crying: weak, helpless tears as he loosens his grip and lets the last, fine threads of hope that he was clinging to slip from his fingers.

No matter how hungry he is to have his brother back again, no matter how much it hurts him inside to be so very, very alone, there’s only one answer he can come to. Only one conclusion he can reach. If he wants to save even the smallest fragment of his Sammy, then he has to stop.

Oh God, he has to stop.

Dean has been living in Hell for thousands of years, but this is the first moment he has ever felt truly damned.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Hiding what he’s done up until now is useless, but Dean does his best to postpone discovery. Piece by piece, he brings the rememberings down the hall and tucks them into an unused cell. The body, wrapped in something he thinks is called a carug _(or is it a rupet?)_ follows. When he has compiled all of the evidence, Dean spreads the remaining artifacts out among Sammael’s storage rooms. The distribution leaves each room looking more than a little bare, but if Dean is lucky the demons will bring in enough new finds to cover the lack before Sammael feels the need to wander through his collection.

Even if Sammael does notice, Dean might be lucky enough for his keeper to assume theft or negligence and leave it at that. He could survive punishment for either of those crimes with his mind intact.

Oh, at some point Sammael or another demon is going to need the cell for something. And with the addition of the man’s corpse among the rememberings, it isn’t going to take long for Sammael to understand what Dean was doing—what he meant to do.

So it will be a short wait between discovery and mindless oblivion, but Dean hopes that he has years until the evidence of his crime comes to light. Years to fill with every last memory he can store. Years to drink in Sammael’s brief kindnesses, the heat of his body, the pleasure of his touch. Years to cherish the few, fading memories of his lost brother that he still possesses. Years to whisper Sammy’s name inside his head, years to pair it with his own, years to think how perfect they sound together, like completion, like belonging.

He hopes that he has years to drink in the closest thing he will ever have to happiness, years in which to prepare himself for an oblivion that will likely take no longer than a few seconds. He prays that he can submit calmly when it comes, secure in the knowledge that Sammy-as-Sammael will be safe and all his keeper’s needs will be met.

In the end, though, he only has four months.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

From where he sits at the foot of his keeper’s chair in the tower, Dean has a clear view of the sky through the window. Sammael was beside him only minutes before, but some crisis or other sent the burnt thing up to the tower door and took his keeper away from him. As Dean waits for Sammael to return, he hopes that the not-man’s mood won’t be too spoiled by whatever happened.

Sammael was petting him before they were interrupted, was stroking Dean’s hair in a way that always leaves his chest feeling warm and expansive. The caresses felt good enough that Dean didn’t even really mind the pressure of his keeper’s mouth moving on his skinned shoulder, which is still spit-slick and burning from the attention. If Sam isn’t too annoyed by the burnt thing’s message and they pick up where they left off, Dean thinks that he might be permitted to touch his keeper in return during the coupling that Sammael is almost certainly working towards. Resting his chin on his knee, Dean curls one hand around his ankle and shuts his eyes.

And then jerks sideways into the thick glass as something hits his head.

Eyes watering from the sudden ache in his skull, Dean rubs at the healing bump with one hand while feeling on the floor for the missile with the other. Sammael threw the object, whatever it is, at him—Dean can see the not-man standing in the tower doorway from the corner of his eye—which means that his mood _has_ soured, but Dean is more concerned over the how of the attack than the why.

Unless Dean is strapped down to a table in the basement, Sammael always uses his power to tear and hurt. And, in all the time that Dean has been here, he has never had anything thrown at him with so much casual contempt. Or maybe, Dean corrects as he gets his hand on the missile, Sammael has never been angry enough with him to stoop to such a mundane attack.

He feels his way over the missile without looking down, hoping that it will somehow change and become something else instead—something a little less damning. But it isn’t changing, and now Dean’s stomach is going cold and nauseas and his chest is tightening into a sore, knotted lump.

“What,” Sammael manages finally, his voice choked with fury, “Is that?”

‘That’, Dean knows without looking, is a wooden box, brightly painted and topped with a woman wearing something that looks like a pink flower around her waist. If Dean were to turn the key poking out of the side of the box _(as he did hundreds of times one peaceful afternoon in the basement)_ , the woman would spin around and the box would play twinkling, pretty music.

The last time Dean saw this box, it was on the floor next to the redhead’s stiffening body.

This is it, then. These are his final few moments. It hasn’t been long enough, it isn’t fair, but then again it would never have been long enough. Nothing is ever fair.

Bowing his head over the box, Dean strokes the tiny woman. Tears spill from his eyes, hot and blurring, and he isn’t sure how his chest can feel at once both so hollow and so full of brittle agony.

“There’s a whole fucking room of the shit!” Sammael yells, and something—another remembering?—crashes through the window above Dean’s head. He hunches instinctively away from the falling glass, but doesn’t otherwise move. This isn’t anything he can outrun, and besides, he doesn’t think his legs are working just now.

“Look at me!” Sammael thunders.

Clenching his jaw, Dean continues to blink steadfastly down at the box in his hands.

“ _Dean!_ ”

It’s the first time Sammael has ever spoken his name and Dean responds to it without thinking, lifting his head to look in his keeper’s direction. He can’t really see through his tears, but he doesn’t have to see Sammael to know that he’s angry. That he’s _furious_.

Dean watches Sammael approach. He makes himself limp in Sammael’s hands when his keeper leans down and, with his fingers digging into the fleshy part of Dean’s upper arms, yanks him to his feet.

“What did you do?” Sammael roars, shaking him. Dean has no voice to answer with, of course, and wouldn’t speak even if he did, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Sam’s mind is immediately on top of his, fumbling and ripping in its haste. It hurts, and Dean is already panicked by the knowledge of what’s coming, and he responds without thinking by reaching for the only weapon he has.

The light flares up immediately, brighter than ever before—not just blinding but searing—and Dean’s panic surges even higher. The light is dangerous. It’s a destroyer. Sammael can’t be touching Dean when he’s lit up like this. He _can’t_.

Thoughtlessly, Dean pushes at his keeper’s chest while trying to twist away. The feel of Sammael’s bare skin beneath both of his palms brings the belated realization that pushing is a bad idea. His mind has just begun sending frantic signals to his hands to pull away when the light in his head explodes.


	8. Chapter 8

Someone’s crying. Someone’s crying and Dean’s face is wet.

 _Me,_ he thinks, _I’m crying._

But that doesn’t feel right, and a couple of seconds later he realizes that he can’t be the one making those wet, moaning noises because he can’t speak. A couple of seconds after that, he realizes that there are _words_ in the moans.

“—come back, oh God, Dean, please—don’t—come back to me, man—”

Dean cracks his eyes open and Sammael is pawing at his face, and crying on him, and the lines on the not-man’s skin have gone ice blue. Confused, he stirs and Sammael jerks, blinking wildly through his tears. His face crumples when he sees Dean looking up at him _(god, he looks like he’s just been gutted)_ and he jerks Dean up into an awkward sitting position so that he can pull him into a hug.

“Dean,” he gasps, gripping the back of Dean’s head with one hand to hold him close. “Oh my God, _Dean_.”

And this ... this doesn’t sound like Sammael.

 _Sammy?_ Dean thinks cautiously, but he doesn’t sense his keeper’s mind on his and knows that Sam-or-Sammael can’t hear him. He doesn’t know which beloved to hope for, the keeper or the brother—knows which he’d prefer, but he doesn’t want to lose both of them, _he can’t_. And as much as it sounds like Sam, the wings and the tail and the swirling markings and the yellow eyes belong to the other, to the demon.

Dean doesn’t know what to think, can’t really manage anything coherent at all past the mingled dread and hope twisting him up inside. He does know that Sam-or-Sammael looks heartbroken, that he needs comfort, and so heedless of possible punishment he reaches up to pat Sam-or-Sammael’s cheek with one hand.

There’s no immediate repercussion. Sam-or-Sammael cries a little harder is all, pulls Dean a little closer. It’s getting difficult to breathe, actually, and Dean needs to get a better look at his brother-or-keeper in order to figure out which he’s dealing with, so he gently tries to pull away. For a moment, Sam-or-Sammael resists and then, abruptly, Dean finds himself released. He looks up in startlement as his brother-or-keeper scrambles to his feet and backs away.

“Oh God,” Sam-or-Sammael chokes out. “I—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be touching you, you must—oh my God—”

It’s too similar to what the redhead was saying just before he cut his own throat—too similar to how he was acting, to what Dean has been dreading—and he scrambles after Sam _(it’s Sam, of course it is, no matter how he looks)_ with his heart beating painfully in his throat. Sam looks away as he approaches, and starts to step back again, but Dean reaches out and grabs his brother by one wing and tugs. Sam’s wing trembles like a caught bird in Dean’s grasp, but Sam doesn’t pull it free and he stops backing up. Dean takes that as a good sign and releases his brother’s wing in order to grab Sam’s face.

“Don’t,” Sam moans. He rounds his shoulder in an attempt to turn further away, but it’s a weak protest at best and Dean manages to pull him around instead.

Holding his brother’s face lightly with both hands, he leans forward and presses their foreheads together. Sam’s eyes flick up for a second, startled and still that arresting, honeyed color, and then drop. Dean gives his brother a couple of seconds and then, when it’s clear Sam is still clueless, straightens briefly before pressing their foreheads together again.

Sam is still crying, but this time he squints at Dean through his tears, trying to focus. “D-Dean? What—”

Straightening a second time, Dean grabs his brother’s wrist and taps his temple with Sam’s fingers. Taps Sam’s temple. His own. Sam’s.

Understanding lights in Sam’s eyes and a moment later his mind, breeze light, brushes against Dean’s.

 **Sammy,** Dean thinks again, letting all of his relief and worry and love color the word, and Sam bursts into a fresh round of sobs. He doesn’t move away, though, and when Dean steps into his brother Sam opens his arms and wings and wraps both around Dean to keep him close.

“I’m s-so suh-suh-sorry,” Sam chokes through his tears, and then, inside Dean’s head and stutter-free, continues, **I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, you must hate me, Dean, God—**

Dean presses his lips against his brother’s throat—feels Sam’s pulse stuttering against his mouth. **Love you,** he promises. **Always.**

Sam clings to him and cries.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It’s hours before Sam’s tears slow, and then Dean can tell from glimpses of his brother’s reddened, scratchy-looking eyes that it’s only because Sam doesn’t have the moisture left to keep it up anymore. Inside, where they don’t show, the tears are still falling.

They’re lying on the floor now—Dean on his back with Sam curled small and close against him. His brother’s tail is wrapped bruisingly tight around his ankle, like Sam’s afraid Dean will run away at any moment, but Dean doesn’t mind. Smiling, he strokes Sam’s hair, and his wings, and his back, and anything he can reach. He still can’t quite believe that he can do this anytime he wants now. That he can touch without permission or fear of retribution.

“Dean,” Sam says and, although his voice is still wet, Dean has no trouble understanding him. His head shifts on Dean’s chest as he tilts his face up to meet Dean’s eyes. “How can you—how can you not hate me?”

Puzzled by the impossible question, Dean answers simply, **You’re Sammy.**

Sam lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob. “That isn’t actually a reason, man. God, I—Dean, the things I did—people, anyone I could—could find.” Then, more softly and broken, “The things I did to you.”

Oh.

Dean understands now, he gets why Sam is so torn up—why the redhead was so broken by the weight of crimes he didn’t commit—but he isn’t sure how to explain it to his brother in a way that Sam will understand. In a way he’ll believe. As he considers, he traces one of the drifting lines in his brother’s skin down to the blank swath of burn scars and smoothes his hand over the evidence of old pain. Then he says, **Everything I’ve been through—everything I did—you were there for me.**

This time, Sam chokes on his laugh before it starts. “I _wasn’t_. I wasn’t there, I was here—God, Dean, I k-killed you, I—I turned you into some kind of, of sex toy for myself and I—” His hand drags up Dean’s side and stops just short of the temporarily ruined flesh of Dean’s shoulder, where his agonized gaze is locked. “I _hurt_ you,” he whispers.

 **Sammael hurt me,** Dean corrects. **He wasn’t you. You aren’t him.**

He doesn’t mention that, sometimes, he loved his keeper for the pain. Loved Sammael for considering Dean valuable enough to spend so much time and energy on. For wanting to possess him enough to obsess over removing Castiel’s mark. He doesn’t mention it because he doesn’t understand those emotions himself and Sam, in his current, devastated state, _really_ isn’t going to understand.

“I don’t deserve you,” Sam says, shutting his eyes with a grimace. “I don’t—I don’t deserve _anything_ , but I—I need you.”

Sam isn’t anywhere close to understanding, Dean can tell, but he isn’t going anywhere either—isn’t reaching for a knife—so Dean is willing to be content for the moment. Although maybe ... maybe if Dean can’t heal his brother’s insides, he can distract him for a while. Make him feel good.

 **I need you too,** Dean says, following the burn scar down to his brother’s ass and tugging Sam closer.

Sam immediately stiffens. “Dean, what—what are you—”

 **Let me make you feel good,** Dean soothes, nuzzling at his brother’s throat. He can feel Sam’s interest as a subtle stirring where Sam’s cock is pressed up against his hip.

But instead of mounting Dean the way he always does, Sam chokes out a broken, “No,” and pushes away.

Puzzled _(and, if he wants to admit it, a little hurt)_ by the reaction, Dean sits up as his brother gets to his feet. Pushing a hand through his hair, Sam paces away for several steps before coming to an abrupt halt and looking back at Dean. His expression hovers between horrified and sickened and Dean’s heart sinks.

 **Did I do it wrong?**

“No!” Sam blurts, and for some reason he looks even more nauseous than before. “God, no, Dean, I—I just—I can’t do that to you anymore.”

 **What about the hunger?**

“The wha—oh God. _Oh God_.” Sam’s face pinches tight with panic. Now he doesn’t just look nauseous; he looks trapped.

Dean can tell that the thought of coupling with him isn’t any more appealing than it was to Sammael at first, and the knowledge makes him ache inside in a lonely, lost way. He resists the urge to draw his knees to his chest and hide himself, settling for just dropping his eyes.

 **Are you going to make me hurt?** he asks timidly. **It hurts, when you ignore it. It feels like I’m burning.**

“Oh God,” Sam says again. His voice sounds funny, coming out so strangled and thick. Dean waits for several endless, anxious moments and then, finally, Sam whispers, “No. No, of course I won’t hurt you.” He lowers himself back down beside Dean and, carefully, wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders to draw him in close. “No one’s going to hurt you any more, Dean, I promise.”

Dean is less satisfied with that answer than he wants to be—mostly because Sam is radiating misery and pain. He’ll get used to coupling with Dean eventually, though—will come to enjoy it—because although Sam is not Sammael, they share certain traits. The desire for Dean’s body is one of those traits, Dean knows that from the lightning dream. Sam is just ... he’s just hurting right now.

Lifting his eyes to his brother’s, Dean says, **I want you to be happy, Sammy. I found you. I saved you. You should be happy.**

The look Sam gives him in return is filled with a reluctant, sorrowful knowledge that makes Dean look away again with a shiver. He starts to draw back and Sam’s arm tightens around him.

“You did,” Sam says as he cups the side of Dean’s face. “You did save me.”

Shutting his eyes, Dean lets the warmth from those words wash over him. As Sam’s hand strokes his cheek, he rests the other side of his head against his brother’s shoulder.

Sam is silent for a few, blissful seconds, and then he continues, “But I—the things I’ve done, I—if I could remember how, I’d erase my memory again.” He laughs and the hollow sound echoes unpleasantly though Dean’s bones. “It’s funny, you know. I can remember making the decision after I—when I left you in the graveyard. It hurt so much, thinking you were—were gone, and I—I didn’t want to remember anymore, I didn’t want to know. And I remember thinking that if I—if I didn’t remember anything, then it would be, I don’t know, bearable. And I—I remember bits and pieces of the ritual, but not enough to—fuck, I want to burn the last three thousand years from my mind. And what—what I did to you, Dean, Jesus Christ, I—”

Dean can’t listen to this anymore. **You need to forgive yourself,** he breaks in. **It wasn’t you.**

“You keep saying that, but I—I just don’t know if I can believe it. I remember everything, Dean, I—what I did, how it felt—I liked it. Fuck, the things I did and I—I _enjoyed_ it.”

He says it as though Dean should be shocked, which is odd. If Sam remembers everything so clearly, then he must also know that Sammael never bothered to hide his pleasure.

 **Not _you_ ,** he insists, lifting his head and nosing at his brother’s cheek. _**Sammael**_ enjoyed it.

“I just—” Sam’s eyes squeeze tightly shut and he swallows with evident difficulty. “Dean, I don’t think there’s—in my head, there isn’t any difference.”

 **There will be,** Dean answers immediately, doing his best to project the certainty he feels inside. He isn’t sure how much of the emotion gets through, but some must because Sam quiets, wings draping forward to enfold Dean’s body in a soft, caressing curtain.

After a long moment, and without opening his eyes, Sam asks, “How can you be so sure?”

Finally, an easy question.

 **Because you’re my Sammy.**

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Their first coupling is awkward.

Sam clearly both wants and doesn’t want to touch Dean, which is confusing, and he seems incapable of looking at Dean when he’s touching him. Every time Sam starts to lose himself in the sensations—Dean can see it happening, can see his brother’s face start to slacken with pleasure—his body will give a jarring jerk and he’ll bite his lip and go all tight and distant again. His hand on Dean’s cock is perfunctory, his thrusts tightly controlled, and even though they both climax it’s probably one of the most unfulfilling couplings Dean has ever experienced.

Afterward, Sam is shame-faced and red-eyed and flushing. “I’m sorry,” he whispers as Dean wipes himself down with one of the cloths Sammael kept in the tower for just such a purpose. “Oh my God, Dean, I’m so sorry.”

 **Don’t worry, Sammy,** Dean says, balling up the cloth in one hand and giving his brother a light kiss on the cheek. **You’ll get the hang of it.**

When Sam has stopped crying _(Dean is more perplexed by his brother than he ever was by Sammael)_ they go downstairs to the bedroom. Dean isn’t sure why at first—it’s too soon to sleep, and he’s pretty sure Sam doesn’t want to use the bed for anything else right now—but when they arrive Sam goes straight over to his wardrobe and takes out a second pair of pants. Oh, he must want to change.

Only instead Sam turns around and holds the pants out.

Confused, Dean blinks at him.

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand while continuing to hold the pants out with the other. “Just. Dean, can you just.”

Suddenly it clicks.

Chest loosening with understanding, Dean steps forward and takes the pants from his brother. Then, tossing them over his forearm, he reaches for the waistband of Sam’s pants. And looks up, startled, when Sam jerks away.

“No!” Sam rasps. His wings are flapping wildly behind him, his tail is held stiff and low. He looks like he’s one wrong move away from crying again, which makes Dean’s chest hurt. Hugging the pair of pants in his arms close, he chews on his lower lip and tries to figure out what he did wrong this time.

Sam’s throat works for a moment and then, grimacing, he turns his face away. “They’re for you,” he says finally.  
Oh.

Dean looks down at the fabric for a moment, stupidly, and then starts moving. It takes him a couple of minutes to figure the pants out, but finally he stands in front of his brother, picking awkwardly at the fabric. Funny how soft and flowing these pants look on Sam: they feel confining and clingy against his skin. Restrictive.

“They’re a little loose on you,” Sam says softly. “But, uh, I can have some new ones made. And, uh, a shirt.”

Dean didn’t want to say anything before, not with Sam looking so upset, but he actually has the pants on now and they’re more than a little uncomfortable. And a shirt probably isn’t going to feel any better.

 **Why?**

“Why what?”

 **Why do I need pants and a shirt?**

Dean can’t read the expression on his brother’s face, but something’s happening there because the muscles in Sam’s cheek are twitching. Finally, Sam says, “Because I don’t want people looking at what’s mine.” His voice is flat and toneless, which makes Dean think that maybe his brother isn’t being fully truthful, but he doesn’t want to push Sam any more than he already has today, and anyway it makes sense.

Giving the pants a final, annoyed tug, he asks, **So what now?**

Sam gives himself a shake and then straightens. His head comes up and his wings lift and his tail twitches. He looks, for a moment, just as strong and confident as Sammael ever was.

“What you did to me—what you did to all of that stuff downstairs—can you ... Do you think it’s still working?”

Dean blinks, surprised by the unexpected question, and then glances inside of himself and calls the light. For the first time since he stopped practicing, it doesn’t come. Dean doesn’t really need it anymore, but Sam seems to want it and so his heart beats a little faster at the failure. Chewing his lower lip, he shuts his eyes and tries harder, straining after the light hard enough that his head aches with the effort. He’s about to give up when the faint, familiar glow finally seeps into his thoughts.

 **The light’s still there,** he announces, relieved, and opens his eyes again.

“How good are you at using it? I mean, obviously it works—” Sam glances down at himself with a slight, self-deprecating smile. “—but how reliable is it?”

 **I don’t know,** Dean admits. **It’s been a while since I practiced.** Ornias’ horrified, lifeless face flickers through his mind at the thought and he lowers his eyes to the floor.

“The body,” Sam says, reading either his mind or his face or both.

 **Yes,** Dean says in answer to the not-question. **I didn’t want to—to hurt you.**

“Who was it?”

 **Ornias.**

Sam is silent for a moment, and then he says, “I thought he finally got tired of waiting for me to challenge Lucifer. He found me in the desert, you know. After Castiel—” He breaks off abruptly, and when Dean glances up his brother is running one hand up and down the burn scars along his side. When Sam notices him looking, he clears his throat and continues, “—after we talked.”

 **I’m sorry,** Dean offers immediately. **I didn’t mean to hurt him. He was upset—you know, after—and there was a—a knife.**

“It’s okay,” Sam says. He still sounds rough, but there’s no real anger in his voice. As he nods and draws a hand over his mouth, some of the guilt knotting Dean’s chest loosens. “I—if you hadn’t been there, I probably would have done the same thing.”

Dean was just beginning to relax, but his gut goes tight and frozen with the thought of Sam in Ornias’ place, and before he knows he meant to move he’s standing with his arms wrapped tightly around his brother’s waist and his face pressed against Sam’s neck.

 **Don’t leave me,** he pleads desperately. **I just got you back.**

“I won’t. Dean, hey. It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere.” Sam strokes his hands down Dean’s back as he reassures him. His tail curls loosely around Dean’s upper thigh. “I should, but I—I’m not strong enough to let you go again.”

It sounds like a promise, and Dean wants to believe it but can’t quite bring himself to. **I can be good,** he says, pressing himself as tightly against his brother’s body as he can manage. **I can—I know I’m stupid, but I can still learn. I can be a good pet.**

Sam makes a funny sound—Dean doesn’t know whether to describe it as a laugh or a sob—and touches the back of Dean’s head lightly with one hand. Dean can feel his brother’s fingers trembling as they stroke though his hair.

“You’re not a pet,” Sam says. His voice—that lovely, wonderful voice that is so kind and strong and perfect—comes out wet and strained. “You’re my brother. You’re my—you’re perfect. And you—God, you’re so fucking smart, Dean. You found me. You s-saved me. I didn’t—I didn’t think it was possible.”

It’s disorienting, hearing those words from Sam. Dean has accepted his lot in life—he knows that he isn’t clever or beautiful or strong, knows that Sammael only ever accepted him as a pet because he was forced into it by the connection between them—and it’s more than a little alarming to be told that he has gotten something wrong again. He doesn’t know how to be strong or smart or anything Sam is telling him he should be. He doesn’t know how to be Sam’s brother.

He’s going to mess up.

“Shh,” Sam soothes, and Dean realizes that his breath is labored and swift with panic against his brother’s chest. “Don’t freak out. It’s okay, man, I won’t—I’m not gonna push you. We can go as slow as you want, okay? But I don’t—you’re not my pet. You’re my brother, Dean. You’re my _brother_.”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Sam sends all his demons away. Some in search of more artifacts, some on diplomatic missions to other demonic enclaves with which Sammael was in communication. He sends them away, he tells Dean, because they’ll be easier to deal with when they return singly. Dean doesn’t understand what his brother means by that until the demons are gone and Sam leads him outside to the slave pens.

Dean has never seen the pens up close before, and he’s surprised by how rickety the wooden frames of the cages look. If these slaves really wanted to, they could escape. They could break down the doors, which are only held shut with cords of leather or dried strips of sinew. They could climb over the castle walls, or dig their way beneath them, or simply pass through the outer gate situated less than ten feet from the pens—it’s never locked.

Then again, as Dean remembers his own time alone in the world, he thinks that he understands the slaves’ passivity. They can expect to be abused here—punished for offenses real or imagined. They will probably be tortured. They might very well be killed, just like the poor blonde who was whipped to death before Dean’s eyes.

But outside, left unprotected, death is certain.

The soft murmuring of the half-humans ceases when they notice Sam’s approach, and there’s a subtle shift away from the outer bars. Heads are lowered, eyes dropped. Although the air is thick with the unpleasant scents of fear—sweat, and urine, and something rustling and low that stirs the hairs at the back of Dean’s neck—he doesn’t sense any true panic. Instead, the slaves seem filled with resignation—Dean notes it in the placid way that they stand there and wait for Sam to make his choice.

The chosen slave won’t argue, either, Dean is sure. He’s seen it before, many times. The man or woman will simply bow their head and walk forward without so much as a sideways flicker of their dull, empty eyes. They will submit to any and all of Sam’s demands without a struggle. Dean admires that ability— he has never been able to learn the trick himself, has never been able to be so good when he knows that it isn’t going to grant him anything but more pain.

He glances sideways at his brother now, wondering if Sam brought him here to learn proper behavior—maybe some of these half-humans would be able to show him what Sam wants, how to be a brother. But Sam is turned away from the slaves, staring at the outer wall of the castle with an unreadable expression on his face and drooping wings. Dean edges closer, clumsy with the confining rustle of pants around his legs, and brushes his brother’s side with one hand. Sam swallows at the unspoken question, and nods, and gestures toward the pens with one wing.

“Can you do anything for them?”

Dean blinks, startled, and lets his hand fall back to his side. He’s just a pet, and a poor one at that; he doesn’t understand what Sam thinks he might be able to accomplish here. As he looks around for a hint, his eyes catch on a blackened patch of earth. The body has long since been removed, but that’s where Castiel was killed—the ruined, cracked earth bears witness to the passing of the angel with a permanency that no stone marker could offer. Dean feels a little twinge of guilty regret, the same as he always does when he looks at that mark, and then he remembers Castiel’s parting prayer.

He remembers the light.

Shifting uneasily, he turns his gaze from the blackened earth and back to the pens. He doesn’t know whether he can do what Sam wants—not for these twisted creatures. Even the oldest among them was born here, born into this Hell with their stumpy wings or vestigial claws or malformed hooves. This is all they remember. All that they know.

But maybe ... maybe this isn’t what they’re _supposed_ to be. Maybe this poisoned, venomous world was never meant for them. Castiel told Dean that the time for man was over, that this was no place for humans. He spoke of other angels, angels who were meant to bear their charges Home but failed in their duty. Maybe Dean can make these poor slaves, who must be the descendants of the lost, remember how things should be—how _they_ should be.

Other maybes tremble in his mind, but they’re too great—too impossible—for him to comprehend right now. Just these pens are daunting enough: far too great a task for someone like him to undertake. But Sam asked, and so Dean at least has to try.

There are isolation pens off to the right—smaller, meant for single occupants bound for trade or marked for some specific duty or demonic pleasure. Dean makes his slow, hesitant way over to those pens and, after a few moments of indecision, works open the leather tie on one of the doors.

There’s a boy inside, small and far less frightening than the adults in the other pens. Scales run down one side of the boy’s body. He has tentacles instead of fingers and red, slitted eyes like a snake’s. When Dean steps inside the pen, the boy turns his face away with a slight shudder—still too young to have learned the fatal acceptance of the others. There’s a brand on one bony shoulder, a mark of ownership that hasn’t yet had a chance to heal. As Dean looks down at that mark, as he sees how raw it is, something shifts inside of him and his own awkwardness falls away.

Carefully, he crouches before the boy with both hands held up and open—no implements of torture here, no more brands. After several minutes of holding that awkward position, he’s rewarded by a reluctant, frightened glance. He does his best to look harmless and offers an encouraging smile in return. That gets him a longer look, but there is still marked fear in the boy’s face—in the way he’s holding himself—and Dean has never wished more for the use of his voice. He’s never wanted more to be able to speak so that he can assure the boy that he won’t hurt him, that he’s here to help, that the boy is safe.

He starts to look back at Sam—maybe his brother will tell the boy what Dean can’t—and his eye catches on something shining in the dirt. Dean reaches for the object without thinking and it’s in his hand before the boy’s slight motion of protest registers. Curious, he looks down at it.

The stone is white and shot through with shining veins of silver that catch and gleam in the sun. It was probably rough once, but years of touch have worn its edges away and now it is smooth, almost polished. A decorative heirloom passed down through the years, maybe, or some kind of toy. Whatever it is, it’s obviously precious to the boy.

Dean starts to hand the stone back and then, caught by an urge too vague to be considered memory, flips it over on his palm instead. The light catches the silver, making it wink like a—like a _coin_ —and the urge solidifies further. Narrowing his eyes in concentration, Dean flips the stone over onto the back of one hand and walks it across his knuckles. The action is both familiar and reassuring, so he does it again—and then a third time when he notices that the boy is watching him with hesitant fascination.

He fumbles his fourth pass, dropping the stone back into the dirt, and flushes in embarrassment _(he ruins everything, always)_ before noticing the quick flash of the boy’s teeth. After a moment of thought, Dean reaches for the stone again and is careful to let it leap from his fingers in a pantomime of clumsiness. The boy’s tentative smile widens, and when Dean ‘accidentally’ drops the stone again, he leans down and lifts it with his tentacles.

Holding as still as he can, Dean waits to see what the boy will do. He isn’t sure why it matters—why he wants the boy to smile at him: to not be so afraid. Either what he is about to try will work, or it won’t. The boy’s feelings toward Dean aren’t going to change that.

But when the boy holds the stone out with a shy smile, Dean finds himself smiling back, relieved. He realizes, with a warm, not unpleasant shock, that he isn’t doing this for Sam any longer. Dean genuinely wants to help this boy—he wants to help all of them, wants to make them remember what they should have been, if things were different.

When he calls, the light comes easily into his mind and leaves no room for doubt. As he looks into the boy’s slitted, red eyes, Dean knows with calm, warm certainty that this is going to work.

Smiling, he reaches out and takes the boy’s hand.


	9. Chapter 9

It takes more energy, remembering humans who have never known anything but this corrupted world. Remembering more than two slaves at a time leaves Dean exhausted and limp in his brother’s arms. It’s a weariness that their customary couplings can’t touch—the energy source feeding the light is separate from that generated by the hunger, and only time can restore his strength.

Between rememberings, Sam dances attendance on Dean in a way that makes him restless and uncomfortable in his own skin. He doesn’t know what to make of this kind of behavior—can’t reconcile the tender words Sam offers throughout the day with his reluctant, impersonal performance during their couplings. He doesn’t understand why Sam will start crying sometimes, for no apparent reason at all, and then drop to his knees, wrapping his arms around Dean’s waist and burying his face against Dean’s stomach, and whisper garbled apologies while his wings shake and his tail hangs between his legs and the lines on his body run blue.

Dean doesn’t understand, but he does his best to reassure. He winds his hands in Sam’s hair, which is so very soft and silken, and sends comforting, loving thoughts into his brother’s mind. It always makes Sam cry a little harder at first, but eventually he calms and, sometimes, forgets himself enough to leave gentle little kisses on Dean’s stomach and hips before pushing away.

If Dean could, he would live inside those moments forever—or in the seconds when Sam looks at him with a soft, fond smile on his mouth and nothing but happiness in his eyes. Sam offers such moments as accidentally and infrequently as Sammael offered his own displays of tenderness, but Dean has hope. He’s learning more each day, becoming a better brother, and someday he will be good enough for Sam to love always and forever. Dean thinks that he can be good enough for that.

As it is, he has already become an expert at recognizing Sam’s triggers.

He’s careful to keep his brother away from the freed slaves, whom Sam finds distressing—both those already remembered and those waiting their own turns. That part isn’t difficult, actually: the humans have moved into the castle, but they avoid Sam as best they can. Dean thinks that they would welcome his own company, and part of him yearns for that—part of him longs to know more about them, to learn their ways—but he isn’t going to leave Sam. He isn’t going to leave Sam and Sam can’t be around the humans and that’s that.

Dean also does his best to keep Sam away from the basement. That’s more difficult, because sometimes Sam gets this stubborn look on his face and strides downstairs no matter how much Dean clings to him or pleads. Sam finds his way to the torture chamber and stands there looking at the empty tables and the bloodstained floor and the racks of instruments on the walls. Dean can see his brother tearing apart inside when he does that and knows that Sam is weeping, even if Dean can’t see any tears.

After those visits, when the hunger comes again, Sam always cries during their coupling. But he also kisses Dean’s shoulder, and his back, and the line of scar tissue along his throat. It’s more contact than he normally offers, and if it didn’t hurt Dean’s chest so badly to see his brother in pain then he would love these moments.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispers as he moves inside of Dean. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

Dean nuzzles his brother’s face and holds him close and drinks in what little Sam can give with a desperation that has nothing to do with the hunger in his chest and everything to do with the deep-seated, aching need that haunts him day and night.

Dean saved Sam, he knows he did. In some ways, though, his brother is still floundering and lost, and Dean doesn’t have the faintest idea how to fix him. He remembers what Castiel said, that it was beyond his power to bring Sam back, and Dean is beginning to wonder if this is what the angel meant, because Sam seems irrevocably broken. That much seems evident from the way that he continues to cling to Sammael’s form.

The other humans Dean touched have shed their strangeness. They have lost wings and tentacles and horns and tails and brands. Sam alone retains his old shape.

Initially, Dean thought maybe that was because this is what Sam is, but the more he considers it the more he thinks that his Sammy never had wings, or strange moving markings, or golden eyes or a tail.

He asks his brother finally, one day when Sam is carrying him back up to their room after he remembered a graying man and his mate.

“You really don’t remember what I looked like?” Sam asks softly.

 **Only pieces.**

Sam is silent for several steps and then he says, “It bothers you, doesn’t it? That I didn’t change back like the others.”

Dean can hear the hurt in his brother’s voice and makes the effort to reach around Sam’s side and grab the edge of one wing. **I don’t mind how you look,** he answers truthfully. **I just want to know what I did wrong.**

By now, they have reached the bedroom and Sam sets him down gently on the bed before laying one hand alongside his face and saying, “Nothing. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

Dean wants—badly wants—to believe the words, but the evidence is rising huge and black from his brother’s shoulders. It’s snaking out to pull the covers up over him while Sam strokes his hair.

 **I didn’t do it right,** he argues. **If I did it right, you wouldn’t still ...**

“Still what?” Sam says when Dean can’t finish the thought. He’s smiling, but it isn’t an expression Dean likes and his hand has stilled in Dean’s hair. “Still be a monster?”

 **You’re not a monster.**

Sam’s mouth quirks as he takes his hand back. “Aren’t I?”

 **No,** Dean maintains, reaching out to grip one of his brother’s wrists and keep Sam close. Sam allows Dean to pull him down, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting his free hand on Dean’s chest. But he isn’t smiling anymore, not even a little bit, and the sorrowful resignation in his eyes hurts.

“If I understand what you’re doing, Dean—what Castiel gave you—then you’re making things remember what they’re supposed to be. You’re making them remember what they would have been before the world ended.”

That much Dean is in agreement with, so he nods, careful not to let his brother go.

“You did that for me. You gave me my memories back and took away the madness. But you—Dean, you can’t take away the taint in my blood.”

Sam’s words bring up an echo of the lightning dream and Dean frowns. **What taint?**

Holding Dean’s gaze with his own, Sam answers, “Demon blood. Azazel—a demon—infected me with it when I was a baby. That’s what started all of this. This—” he gestures at himself with his tail “—is who I’m supposed to be, Dean. The wings and the eyes and the tail, they’re just a manifestation of what’s inside of me. I know you don’t want to believe it—you never wanted to, not even at the end—but this is what I am. A monster.”

Sam is still regarding him steadily, and Dean can tell that his brother believes the words, but that doesn’t make them true. He senses that much deep inside, somewhere close to the place where the light originates. As he looks into Sam’s eyes—Sam’s golden, sad eyes—Dean is beginning to think there’s another— _truer_ —explanation for Sam’s appearance.

Dean touched Sammael and made him remember Sam, but he couldn’t make Sam forget Sammael.

The man sitting on the edge of the bed right now is Dean’s brother, but he remembers being the demon and, in many ways, he believes that he still is the demon. He isn’t, of course, and Dean knows that, but he’s also beginning to see how deeply Sam’s faith in his own wretchedness runs. Deeply enough to put that resigned sorrow in his eyes. Deeply enough to leave him weeping and reluctant to take the pleasure he so obviously wants. Deeply enough that he’s unconsciously using his power to resist the changes Dean’s light urged, stubbornly reflecting his self-hatred on his skin.

Until Sam _believes_ that he’s Sam—not the demon Sammael or a wretched amalgamation of the two—then he’s going to continue to look like the monster he thinks he is inside.

The realization hurts even as it comforts. On the one hand, Castiel was right: Sam won’t ever be the same man he used to be, not exactly. But at least it isn’t Dean’s fault that his brother looks they way he does. At least he didn’t mess up this time.

Dean smiles as he presses a soft kiss against the inside of Sam’s wrist, but it’s a wistful expression. While his brother watches him uncertainly, he reaches up and traces one of the lower pinions of Sam’s wing.

Eventually, Dean knows, they’ll go away.

But Sam is scarred inside where it doesn’t show, and that isn’t going to change.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It takes almost two months for Dean to remember all of the freed slaves. By the end of that time, he has all but brought the light to heel—which is a good thing, because not three days after the final taint has been removed from the humans, the first demon comes back.

Sam holds it still with his power while Dean calls the light forth and lays his hand against one furred cheek. Sam continues to hold the young woman who appears in the demon’s place while she weeps and screams and, finally, throws up all over herself. He loosens his grasp slightly while Dean washes her clean, and then removes the restraining power altogether to take her in his arms and stroke her hair and whisper words in her ear—words that he refuses to believe for himself, but which he offers unflinchingly and honestly now.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Sam says, and, “It’ll get better. You just need to give it some time.”

The woman cries for a long time, and then seems to calm, and although Dean doesn’t have a good feeling about it—neither does Sam, Dean can see it in his brother’s face—they take her to an empty room on one of the upper floors and leave her to sleep for the night.

In the morning, they find the woman hanging from the balcony in the great hall with a bed sheet noose around her neck. Her tongue protrudes from between her lips, stiff and swollen. Her eyes, mercifully, are closed.

Sam cuts her down in silence and burns her body on a bier in the courtyard.

Four days pass before he speaks again.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

They take more precautions with the other demons, but despite their care they still loose a few. More worrisome, in Dean’s mind anyway, are the four humans who emerge from the experience wrathful rather than sobbing. Those humans shout at Dean in unfamiliar, demonic tongues and show no remorse for past deeds, despite their new, human shapes. Sam regretfully brings them down to the dungeon and locks them away.

Although Sam isn’t offering the new humans any violence, Dean is still distressed by his brother’s actions. He doesn’t like to see anyone locked into those rooms, no matter how frightening they are. His memories of his own time down here are still too fresh.

The first time it happens, he spends the night tossing and turning—can’t sleep for the tremors in his muscles and the memories in his head. Finally, Sam rolls over and pulls Dean against his chest. His hands move in slow, soothing circles across Dean’s back.

“We have to,” he whispers. “They’re not safe.”

 **But I remembered them,** Dean says. He isn’t arguing, just trying to understand, and as Sam continues to rub his back, he presses even closer to his brother’s chest.

For a moment, Sam is silent. Then, haltingly, he says, “Dean, some people, they’re—sometimes, people aren’t good. Sometimes they’re born wrong.”

Dean hears his brother’s unspoken meaning and knows that he’s numbering himself among them. Sam’s stubbornness stings and Dean pushes through his own confused distress to say, **You’re safe. You wouldn’t hurt anyone.**

 **But I did,** Sam answers silently. **I hurt _you_ , I—**

 **But you won’t now,** Dean interrupts, lifting his head from where it’s smushed against his brother’s chest and seeking Sam’s eyes in the darkness. **You’d cut off your own hand before you hurt anyone. That’s why you put the bad people in the basement instead of killing them.**

He can’t make out Sam’s face in the dark, but he can sense his brother’s startlement in the stiffening of his body. For a long while, Sam is silent and still—they both are. Then, finally, he relaxes his grip on Dean and rolls over onto his back with an awkward shift of his wings. He hasn’t acknowledged Dean’s point, but he isn’t protesting it either, and when Dean follows his brother, rolling half on top of him and snuggling close, Sam doesn’t pull away.

It’s a start.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

The ex-demons and ex-slaves don’t mingle well.

They form two distinct groups within the castle—the ex-slaves taking rooms on the higher floors and the ex-demons remaining lower to the ground. Sam and Dean are left to straddle the divide—Dean welcomed above and Sam below, although most days they keep to themselves.

At first, Sam is kept busy playing keeper for the four humans in the basement, but eventually that task is taken over by the brown-haired, middle-aged man who used to be the burnt thing. Sam still goes down into the basement, of course, and Dean follows him, but now they avoid the cells and the torture chamber to explore the rooms of artifacts and the stores of rememberings that Dean has already made.

Now that Sam has his memories back, he can identify almost everything. The blue machine—Dean’s first remembering—is something called a bicycle. Sam rides it down the hallway in demonstration and Dean’s obvious amusement at the sight brings a rare, genuine smile to his face. The metal ball is, in fact, a baseball, but it’s a pewter decoration and not anything someone would actually use in the game. The metal object with the two slits and the pronged tail that set off Dean’s panic on that first day is called a toaster, and is useless without electricity, which Sam claims humans once tamed to live inside of wires instead of snarling through the sky as lightning.

Most of the rememberings have more practical applications, though, and over the next few months Sam and Dean distribute everything to the two camps of people living above before moving on to the rest of the artifacts. It takes Dean less than a day to remember them all, and then he turns his attention to the few ruined areas of the castle, wandering around and repairing crumbling stone or cracked windowpanes with a touch.

Once, he finds a shard of bone in an abandoned room and, remembering the piles of bones he saw carted out from the torture chamber in Sammael’s day, he summons the light and places his hand on it. The shard glows at Dean’s touch, expanding into a full-formed skeleton, but the effort of trying for more than that leaves him unconscious for hours and bed-ridden for weeks. Sam is furious and frantic by turns, and makes Dean promise not to try something so stupid again.

It isn’t a difficult promise to make, in light of the monumental failure of the experiment. Anyway, it’s a bit of a relief, knowing that Castiel’s prayer has limits.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

A little more than half a year after Dean remembered his brother, the food stores start to run out. Sam brings in seeds from Outside and the ex-demons start a garden in the courtyard. They work on it by themselves for the first month or so, but when Sam’s power forces the first fruits and vegetables from the ground, they don’t eat any of them. Instead, the ex-demons carry the food inside and pile it on the stairs leading up to the ex-slaves’ territory.

Dean can’t understand why they’re giving away the fruit of such hard labor without holding back anything for themselves, and when he asks Sam his brother doesn’t answer. Not out loud, anyway. Dean reads the answer in Sam’s eyes, though: in the guilt creasing his face.

The ex-demons are trying to atone for their past crimes by serving those who once served them. Personally, Dean thinks that it’s stupid—they weren’t responsible for their own actions any more than Sam, as far as he can see—but that isn’t his decision to make. Besides, the gesture goes a long way toward bridging the divide.

Less than a week after that first offering, Dean watches from the tower window as some of the ex-slaves make their way out to the garden. The ex-demons pause in their work, setting aside their tools, and after a brief delay the ex-slaves approach them.

The exchanged greetings look awkward even from way up here, but within a few minutes the ex-slaves have picked up some of the spare tools and are working alongside their former masters. The groups remain distinct, and after that first, brief conference there’s no real contact between them, but it’s a start—the first, tentative step toward unity.

The sight leaves Dean surprisingly relieved. He didn’t know he was worried about the tension between the two groups until now, when it seems that the brunt of the danger has passed. He didn’t think to fear, when he sees no real reason for enmity.

At first, Sam seems relieved as well, but as the weeks drag on and the groups continue to merge—the children among the ex-slaves, who have less to remember and resent, are proving a great help with that—Dean notices a change in his brother. Sam seems more reluctant to go anywhere but their room and the tower, which remains a private sanctuary. He stops going down to speak with the ex-demons, avoiding them as diligently as he avoids the ex-slaves. When he does need to go downstairs—for food or water—he keeps his head lowered and his wings tightly mantled against his body. His tail twines itself around his waist, belt-like.

It doesn’t take Dean long to figure out that his brother is ashamed—that he feels obvious and awkward, with his wings and tail and the markings on his skin branding him as a man who used to be a demon. He didn’t seem quite so self-conscious when the other ex-demons were still holding themselves aloof—when it was clear on which side everyone stood—but one human has become much like another now, leaving only Sam standing outside. Only Sam with his retained power and his wings and his tail and his golden, burning eyes.

More than ever, Dean wishes that he could convince his brother to let go of his undeserved guilt. He’s powerless to do anything about it, though, just like he’s powerless to do anything about the persistent ache in his own chest.

Dean has his Sammy back, and the shock of remembering himself has had long enough to fade now that, sometimes, it’s everything Dean hoped it would be. When the guilt and the shame aren’t getting in the way, Sam looks at Dean like he’s wanted, like he’s a treasure. He’s less quick to pull away after their couplings, and sometimes he’ll slip in the middle of his passion and suckle at Dean’s nipples, or caress his thighs and hips, or steal his breath with deep, devouring kisses.

But there are other times when Dean will catch Sam looking at him with an odd expression, and he’ll know, deep in his gut, that his brother is remembering something. It’s bad enough when the memory comes from their time together as the mute and Sammael, when Sam cries and apologizes for things he didn’t do. Sometimes, though, when Sam gets that look, Dean can tell that his brother is remembering something from their time together Before, and the constant, aching longing in his chest hones to a knife’s edge.

Dean will never remember the things that bring those faint, sorrowful smiles to his brother’s lips. He will never be able to share in Sam’s wistful reminiscences. The absence of his past itches inside of Dean, and he feels it as a hollow emptiness, as though he’s nothing more than a scraped-out husk.

Despite the ache, Dean doesn’t regret asking for Sam’s memories instead of his own. He would have traded away more if it had been necessary. He would have sacrificed every last shred of self if it meant Sam could be granted a second chance.

But the growing restlessness in his heart, and the maybes that whisper to him in the night—in his dreams—tell him that isn’t the price Castiel would ask.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

**What’s wrong with her?** Dean asks.

They’re outside for a change, checking on the state of the garden. It’s hot beneath the relentless sun, and dry, and Sam is driving his power deep into the earth to make another well for water, but he stops at Dean’s question to look around.

“What? Who?”

Dean steps closer to his brother and points at a woman sitting down in the scanty shade by the outer wall. She’s sweating like everyone else, which isn’t unusual, but her stomach is horribly bloated and bulging. Her feet and knees look swollen as well.

Sam follows Dean’s gesture and then looks down at the ground immediately, jaw tightening. He looks distressed and Dean settles a hand on his arm.

 **Is she sick?**

“No,” Sam says finally in a tight, strained voice. “She’s pregnant.”

Dean hesitates—the way his brother says that word seems to indicate that he ought to know what it means—and then asks, **What’s that?**

Sam makes a funny noise and hides his face in one hand while turning his head away from Dean. Beneath Dean’s hand, the muscles of his brother’s arm are corded and tight with tension. After several moments of silence, he realizes that Sam is fighting back tears and shifts even closer, pressing up against his brother’s side.

 **Sam?** he offers. **I’m sorry I’m so stupid. I can try harder.**

Sam chokes at that, and when he turns back a second later he _is_ crying, although he sounds angry when he growls, “You’re _not_ stupid. Don’t you ever say that again, not you!”

Dean isn’t afraid of his brother—he knows Sam isn’t going to punish him—but Sam’s anger still stings and he drops his hand, moving back several steps and looking down at the ground. **I’m sorry,** he offers again, and is startled when Sam’s arms and wings wrap around him.

“Don’t,” Sam chokes out, slinging an arm around Dean’s neck. “Don’t fucking apologize to me. Not _ever_.” He’s still crying, body shaking against Dean’s in an alarming way, and Dean finds himself nuzzling at his brother’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Sam continues. “You should have left me, you should have—you should be with Dad and Mom, not— _you don’t belong here._ ”

Dean is confused. Sam can’t be rejecting him—not the way he’s holding Dean so tight and close—but it _sounds_ like rejection and he can’t help but flinch at the sharpened ache inside. He wishes that he never asked about the woman, wishes that he were smarter or cleverer or just plain _better_ so that he wouldn’t upset Sam over such a stupid, meaningless question.

 **I don’t want to be anywhere else,** he says finally. **I want to be with you. You won’t make me go, will you, Sammy?**

“No,” Sam says, and the speed with which he answers carries the assurance of truth. “No, I—I’m so sorry, Dean, but I—I need you too much to let you go. Oh God, I’m so fucking sorry.”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Dean doesn’t ask about the pregnant woman again, even though Sam never actually gives him a meaningful answer, but he figures it out for himself when, two months later, an agonized scream pulls him from a sound sleep. Sam sits up beside him, frowning and looking toward the door, and Dean shivers slightly at the feel of his brother’s power sweeping out into the castle. A moment later, Sam’s expression eases and he sinks back down against the pillows.

“It’s okay, Dean,” he says, throwing one arm over his eyes. “Go back to sleep.”

 **It sounds like someone’s hurt,** Dean argues, fidgeting. He wants to get up and run toward the noises, but he’s reluctant to move without Sam by his side. After all, if this is an attack, then Dean is powerless to stop it without his brother’s help.

“Tella’s giving birth,” Sam says without moving. “It’s a natural process. Just—try to sleep, okay?”

But Dean can’t make himself settle, not when those cries keep coming. Sam offers to block the noise from their room, but Dean just shakes his head and keeps watching the door. Blocking the noise won’t make the cries stop, won’t take away the knowledge that somewhere close by there’s a woman in pain.

Finally, Sam sighs and gets out of the bed. Dean immediately scrambles after him, heart pounding in his chest, and follows his brother out the door and down the hall. Sam moves unerringly down several corridors and one flight of stairs and then stops, nodding at an open door.

“Go ahead and look,” he says, leaning against the wall.

Dean delays for several moments, waiting to see whether Sam is going to come with him or not, and when his brother shows no sign of moving he cautiously starts forward on his own. Sam wouldn’t let Dean do anything too dangerous, but the violence of the cries is terrifying and Dean’s heart is still pounding as he peers around the doorframe and into the room.

There’s a woman on a bed, red-faced and sweating. On one side a man is clutching her hand—or maybe she’s the one doing the clutching, Dean isn’t sure—and on the other a woman is dabbing her forehead and cheeks with a wet cloth. There’s another woman between the bedridden woman’s raised legs, head bent and intent on the place where they join, and it’s so very, very odd that Dean forgets his own apprehension and moves further into the room with wide eyes.

He stands there, unnoticed, as the woman continues to struggle for what feels like hours and then, finally, she gives a monumental groan and goes limp. A moment later, the woman between her legs straightens with something red and wiggling in her arms, and there’s a new cry—higher and cleaner, it lodges in Dean’s chest and expands, filling him with warmth. That red, wiggling thing is a _baby_ —it’s new life, and Dean is too preoccupied with how miraculous that is in this world to pay any attention to the rest of the ritual.

He sees, distractedly, the second woman cut the cord connecting the baby to its mother. Sees the wet, red mess that is cleared away from between the straining woman’s legs before she is covered with a fresh sheet. Mostly, though, he sees the man wiping the baby down with a soft, wet cloth. He sees the wonder in his eyes, and the joy, and he hears the soft laughter from the red-faced woman—wan now, and exhausted—as the man places the clean, crying baby in her arms. The woman drops a kiss on the baby’s forehead and then lifts her eyes—first to the man’s for a long, intimate moment and then, as she continues to rock the baby in her arms, to Dean’s.

It’s the pregnant woman from the courtyard, he realizes as he meets her gaze, only her stomach doesn’t look so swollen anymore, and this ... _this_ is what pregnant means.

Smiling softly, the woman continues to look at Dean, and with a sinking start he realizes that they’re _all_ staring at him. He isn’t used to being the center of attention like this, and he knows that he shouldn’t be, not right now. He’s an intruder here: he doesn’t belong. Flushing, he drops his eyes and starts to back away.

“ _Feghrsni_ ,” a weary voice says. And then Dean catches a recognizable word—his name. “Dean.”

Hesitating, Dean glances up. The woman is still looking at him, weary but smiling, and now she says, “ _Graj krejnrd ztinkrud eresh?_ ”

Dean doesn’t know what she’s asking and, feeling shy and awkward, he sidles to his left and wraps his hand around the doorframe. He feels safer with such a concrete anchor.

 **She wants to know if you want to see the baby,** Sam’s voice whispers in his head. He sounds close enough that Dean would think his brother were right behind him if he didn’t sense the distance between them.

 **Should I?** Dean asks, grateful for the assistance. He’s out of his depth here, certain that he’s going to ruin this wonderful event at any moment but too enchanted by what just happened to leave. He didn’t remember that such things were possible in this world until now, didn’t really comprehend that in order for life to continue, there had to be births to even out all of the death.

 **You won’t ruin anything,** Sam says, and the sadness in his brother’s voice makes Dean thumb uncomfortably at the doorframe. He didn’t mean for Sam to hear that part. **Go ahead,** Sam adds when Dean continues to hold back. **She wants you to.**

“ _Trethni_ ,” the woman calls, adding her urge to Sam’s—this word Dean recognizes from his time with Sammael as a demand to approach.

Reassured by the doubled permission, Dean lets go of the door and moves forward. He walks slowly and carefully, desperate not to disrupt anything, but the room isn’t large and in a few moments he’s standing close enough to the bed that his pants are brushing the sheets.

The woman holds the crying baby up in her arms, somehow managing to keep it close to her chest while still inclining it in Dean’s direction. “ _Graj reshikad eresh?_ ”

Dean doesn’t need his brother to translate that—both the desire in his own heart and the clear request in the woman’s motion lead him to rest one hand lightly on the baby’s head. It doesn’t quiet at his touch, but it doesn’t seem to be crying any louder either and, relieved, Dean touches one finger to the open, flailing palm of the baby’s left hand. Its skin is soft, and slightly dry, and the most wonderful thing he has ever touched.

But this wonder doesn’t belong to him and so, reluctantly, he takes his hands back.

“ _Graj dseljud eresh?_ ”

It’s a man’s voice this time, and Dean turns his head to see the human who must surely be the woman’s mate watching him with an odd expression on his face. It’s a look Dean hasn’t seen in a while, although that may be because he has been spending all his time with Sam instead of the other humans. It’s a look that makes him uncomfortable, that expects him to be things he isn’t. To be something more than the ungainly pet.

 **They want you to name her,** Sam’s voice comes, and Dean’s eyes widen at that and he backs away, shaking his head. He _can’t_ —touching is one thing, but he can’t name something so precious. Names are powerful, they’re important. They can’t be given by stupid, ugly mutes.

“ _Fresa,_ ” the woman on the bed says, her face pulling tight as she watches him. “ _Nak tesliknrd qrilvek dgrayv. Hyndrn dselj lakrik. Fresa._ ”

Sam doesn’t translate that, but Dean doesn’t need him to. They still want him to offer a name. It doesn’t make any sense—Dean isn’t special enough to name anything, and he can’t speak anyway, can’t write. He doesn’t know how they expect him to tell them his choice. And as for choices ...

 **I don’t know any names,** he tells Sam frantically. **I don’t—I don’t remember, I can’t—**

“Mary.”

It’s Sam’s voice, his _real_ voice, and when Dean turns his brother is standing in the doorway, well away from the bed. The woman on the bed repeats the name to herself, softly, and Dean knows it has been accepted, but the mood in the room has soured. There’s fear here now, cold and hateful, and Dean shivers as he goes to his brother.

Sam’s wings are drooping, his head and eyes lowered. The symbols on his skin move like ice floes, slow and blue. He doesn’t resist as Dean pushes him out into the hall and away from the room.

 **You would have called her Mary,** Sam says silently. His mental voice is tinged with the same, shamed sorrow that marks his body. **You would have named her after our mother if you remembered her.**

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

Dean notices more pregnant women after that, which means that there are going to be more babies, and something about that knowledge unsettles him in a way it shouldn’t. After the fourth baby has been born, Dean wanders around the castle with Sam in his wake. He isn’t counting rooms, not consciously, but he doesn’t have to do the math to know that it doesn’t add up. The garden has already expanded to fill the limited area of the courtyard, which is the only available place to grow things within the castle walls, and while there’s plenty to go around now, if babies continue to appear at the rate they have been, it won’t be long before that won’t be the case any longer.

Dean sits by the window in the tower and looks down at the garden, where Mary is crawling through a row of green, leafy plants Sam calls cabbage, and he thinks about the spiders. He thinks about the butterflies, and Leviathan, and the countless other horrors beyond the walls. He thinks about the boy who used to have tentacles where there are now fingers, thinks about crouching in that rickety, wooden cage and sensing a world of possibilities opening out in front of him.

Dean shied away from the enormity of those possibilities then, but he can’t stop thinking about them now. Can’t stop turning the maybes over in his head while he leans against the glass with Sam’s fingers in his hair.

And he knows, deep down, what he has to do.


	10. Chapter 10

**I want to leave,** Dean says.

They’re in bed, both of them damp with sweat from their most recent coupling. Sam’s tail is sliding absently over Dean’s slick hole and Sam’s wings are flapping lazily behind him and Sam’s fingers are doing that tender caressing thing they do on Dean’s throat whenever he starts to feel guilty about the brief moments of enjoyment he allows himself—it all stops at Dean’s comment. Sam goes still enough and quiet enough, in fact, that for a moment Dean thinks his brother has been transformed to stone. Sam is still warm, though—still breathing—and Dean can feel his brother’s heartbeat racing where his chest is pressed against Dean’s side.

When he turns his previous words over in his head, it doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to realize how they came out. How Sam must have taken them.

 **I meant _us_ ,** he corrects, threading his fingers through his brother’s hair. **I want _us_ to leave.**

Slowly, Sam lifts his head from its place on Dean’s shoulder. There’s still fear on his face, the look of a slave waiting for the lash to fall, but relief is seeping in around the edges and his tail is moving again, leaving Dean’s entrance to curl possessively around his upper thigh. Dean continues to stroke his brother’s hair, which is wild and mussed from their coupling, and smiles, and is relieved to see more of the apprehension ease from Sam’s face.

“Why?” Sam asks finally.

 **Lots of reasons,** Dean answers, keeping his tone light, but privately he thinks, _Because you’re dying here. Because I can’t bear to see so much guilt in your eyes, and it isn’t going to go away as long as everything around us reminds you of Sammael._

“Dean, that—” Frowning, Sam sits up on one elbow, pulling his hair from Dean’s fingers. “We’re safe here. We’re all—you don’t see anyone else leaving, do you?”

And that’s the other reason.

Since he can’t easily reach his brother’s hair any longer, Dean settles for trailing one hand down Sam’s forearm as he asks, **You saw my memories? Of what it’s like out there?**

“I’ve _been_ out there, Dean, I know what it’s—”

 **No, you haven’t,** Dean interrupts, tightening his hold on Sam’s arm in emphasis. **Not like I was. Not like they will be.**

And they _will_ have to leave, if only in search of more food. That much becomes clearer and clearer to Dean with every passing day. Sam must have noticed as well—he’s much cleverer than Dean—but he’s too strong and perfect to understand what it means to be a keeperless human beyond the protection of the walls. Frowning, Dean pauses for a moment as he tries to figure out how to explain so that Sam will understand.

 **The time of man on earth has passed,** he says finally. **Castiel told me that, and it’s true. You need power to survive out there. Everything is ... it’s wrong. Twisted. The earth, the water, the plants—everything is poison.**

“I know that, but—”

 **I can change it back.**

Sam blinks, and Dean can see that he has startled his brother. “Dean, that’s—that’d take—do you have any idea how much world is out there? It would take centuries to cover just a fraction of America, let alone the continent.”

Dean doesn’t know what America is, or a continent for that matter, but he knows that the world is big. He doesn’t expect the transformation to be easy or swift.

 **So?** he says. **It’s not like we’re going anywhere.**

But Sam looks even more distressed than before. Pushing away from Dean, he gets out of the bed and starts to pace. The markings on his skin are red again for the first time since he remembered himself.

“And what if a building falls on you? Or you get grabbed by something you can’t change? There are real demons out there, Dean—honest-to-God fallen angels. You aren’t going to be able to undo _them_. And that’s not even beginning to mention all of the stuff that we used to hunt! There’re things out there that were never meant to be anything but killers. You can’t—Jesus Christ, Dean, you can’t even remember how to hold a knife properly.”

Dean flushes a little with shame at that, but he’s been thinking about this for too long to be turned aside. He needs to do this. Sam may not know it yet, but he also needs Dean to do this. And then there’s the world, of course, with its werewolves and vampires and countless demonic strongholds with their populations of slaves and demons. There are other, isolated dwellings of mages like Caliban, and herds of blood mares who lack Dean’s regenerative ability.

Trapping Sam’s gaze with his own, Dean puts all of his determination in his eyes and says, **You won’t let anything happen to me.**

“I can’t hold off an entire army, Dean!” Sam shouts. His tail is snapping, but Dean isn’t afraid. There’s far more fear in his brother’s face than anger.

Sliding out of bed himself, he goes to his brother and grips his arm. The lashing of Sam’s tail doesn’t slow, but at the contact his markings dull from red to black.

 **You and me, Sammy,** Dean presses. **I can use the light to make things remember what they’re supposed to be, and you can keep me safe. I know you won’t let anything happen to me.**

Sam’s jaw clenches at that and he shuts his eyes, face tightening with pain. Gently, Dean reaches up to rest one palm against his brother’s cheek.

 **Maybe this is what we were meant to be,** he offers. **Maybe we were meant to give this world a new start. Maybe this is how you redeem yourself.**

Dean says that last not because he believes it—Sam doesn’t need to be redeemed, Sammael’s crimes aren’t his—but because _Sam_ might believe it. He says it because his brother needs to find a way to hope. He needs to stop trying to live in a past that isn’t his to own.

For a moment, Dean doesn’t think even that is going to be enough, but then Sam nods. “Okay,” he breathes, lifting a hand and covering Dean’s own on his cheek. “For you. I’ll do it for you.”

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It takes longer than Dean thinks it will to prepare for their departure. Sam has all sorts of things he wants to do before they go—new wards of defense to cast and new wells to dig and old spells of light to reinforce. Dean isn’t sure how necessary it all is—they’ll be close enough to call for help for the first few years, anyway—but he supposes that he understands.

Sam doesn’t want to come back, not here. Not to the site of what he considers his crimes.

There’s an unspoken agreement between them: a clean break. They aren’t going to be more than an hour’s travel from the castle for the next few months, will be spending their nights and days within sight of the towering walls, but they both know that they won’t be sleeping here. Once they step outside, they won’t be coming back.

So yes, Dean supposes he understands Sam wanting to be thorough. But he tires of trailing after his brother through the halls, and eventually drifts up to the tower, where he alternates between watching the sky through the window and leafing through Sammael’s collection.

That’s where Sam finds him one day, cross-legged on the floor with a book spread open on his lap, and when Dean looks up at his brother he knows instantly that he isn’t going to like what Sam is here to say. Ducking his head, he goes back to flipping through the book. After a moment, Sam comes and sits next to him.

“The Codex of Asmodeus?” he says incredulously, reading over Dean’s shoulder.

 **I like the pictures,** Dean says, defensive. For one of Sammael’s books, actually, the illustrations are almost nice, limiting themselves to plants and stones instead of demons and torture methods. But it’s the wrong thing to say—Dean can tell from the way that Sam stiffens beside him.

“You still—you still can’t remember how to read, can you?” Sam says softly. It isn’t really a question, so Dean doesn’t bother answering. He’s pretty sure he knows what this conversation is about now—it’s one he’s been expecting almost daily since Sam remembered—and he runs his fingers nervously up and down the sides of the pages.

When his brother continues to sit there silently, Dean shuts the book and says, **Not much point in reading, is there? This is the only library in existence, and it’s full of demonic how-to books.**

“That’s not—we’ll find other books, Dean. Or people will write them, and you should be able to—”

Sam stops abruptly, and Dean knows it’s coming. He can see it hurtling toward him, unavoidable, and his stomach sinks. When the dreaded words finally come, they’re soft. Almost inaudible.

“Dean, why haven’t you done it for yourself?”

Yes, that’s the question. It hurts less than Dean thought it would, being forced to face the loss directly, but it’s still painful enough for him to want to postpone the inevitable for a few more seconds.

 **Done what for myself?** he asks, feigning confusion.

Sam’s response comes back, immediate and implacable. “Made yourself remember.”

And there’s the expected pain, reverberating through his hollow insides and setting off an agonizingly empty ache in the places where his past should be. Setting the book down on the floor, Dean picks at a join in the polished wood with his thumb.

 **It doesn’t work that way.**

“How do you know if you haven’t tried?”

Dean has tried, actually. Once or twice. It gave him a headache and snuffed the light out with an immediateness that left him reeling and disoriented. **I can’t, Sam,** he says, curling his busy fingers into a fist before he scratches the floor. **It isn’t possible.**

Sam is crying now: Dean can hear it in his brother’s breathing. He hates it when Sam does that—it makes him feel awkward and uncomfortable and bruised inside—and he tilts his body a little further away, biting on the inside of his cheek to distract himself from the deeper hurt.

“You won’t take that answer from me,” Sam says thickly. “Why should I take it from you?”

That isn’t a fair question because Dean has tried—he has—but he doesn’t want to talk about those failures. He doesn’t want to talk about this _at all_ anymore.

 **Look, if you want me to learn to read so bad, you can teach me.**

“That isn’t—damn it, Dean, that isn’t what I meant and you know it!” Sam is yelling, but the words are still wet with tears. When Dean glances over, there are tear tracks on his brother’s face. Sam looks like he’s in physical pain, like this is killing him, and Dean’s own pain fades in the face of his brother’s.

Twisting around so that he can face Sam more fully, he puts a hand on his brother’s thigh and says, **I know. I know what you meant. But there’s nothing I can do about it. This is the price I had to pay to have what I wanted.**

Part of the price, anyway. The rest ... well, he and Sam are going to be seeing to it soon.

“You mean it’s the price you had to pay to have me,” Sam says. His voice is bitter, his eyes jaded.

 **Yeah.**

“You got gypped,” Sam mutters, turning away.

Dean reaches out, sliding one hand around the back of his brother’s neck and drawing him back. Sam resists at first, but quickly folds and allows Dean to pull him in and rest their foreheads together. Dean nuzzles at his brother’s nose while squeezing his neck.

 **I think I did pretty good for an ugly, stupid mute.**

“You’re _not_ ,” Sam chokes. “You’re not ugly, Dean, and you’re not stupid either, and I wish—God, I wish I could make you understand how fucking beautiful and brave and intelligent you are, I—I don’t—fuck, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.”

Dean wishes he could make the same shushing noises Sammael made for him sometimes, those noises that bring comfort and ease some of the hurt inside. But all he can do is kiss the tears from his brother’s cheeks and lips. All he can do is let Sam grip him close as he cries, and trail his hand across his brother’s back and over his wings, which tremble at Dean’s touch. Sam’s tail snakes up and around, finding Dean’s waist and curling there.

Dean gives his brother a few minutes, waiting to see if he’ll pull together on his own, and then offers, **I notice you didn’t say anything about me being mute.**

The gentle joke startles a laugh from Sam despite his tears, and a weak smile to go with it, and before his brother starts thinking about _why_ Dean can’t talk, Dean moves in again and presses his lips more firmly against his brother’s. Sam hardly ever permits it—and never when they aren’t in the midst of coupling—but for once Sam’s need for comfort is stronger than his guilt and he presses back.

For one beautiful, shining moment, Sam kisses Dean like he’s loved, like he’s owned, and then he jerks his face to the side and exhales, “I want you to try. For me, Dean, I want you to—there are so many things I remember, and I want—I need you to remember them too. I need you to have that. I miss—God, I miss you so fucking much.”

It hurts a little, being told that Dean isn’t exactly what Sam wants, but he already knew that and so the pain isn’t too bad. And he can’t blame his brother for longing for someone who doesn’t exist anymore because he knows how that feels. He knows the desperate loneliness, the way it crawls through you and bites in the night. He wishes that he could be what Sam wants for Sam’s sake, to ease that hurt, but he knows that it isn’t going to happen.

Maybe this is Sam’s penance. Maybe it’s Dean’s. Oh, not for the things Sam did as Sammael, or for Dean’s failure to be a good pet. Neither of them could help that; it isn’t something they need to atone for. But the scattered fragments of Dean’s memories imply that he and Sam are somehow responsible for this world—Castiel confirmed it, told Dean that Sam was the one who began the Apocalypse. Dean was the one who didn’t stop him.

Maybe it’s only just that they endure some punishment for the parts they played in the end of everything.

But Dean keeps those thoughts to himself. Talking about crimes and sins and failures isn’t going to help Sam, who already bears enough regret in his soul. What his brother needs right now is reassurance. He needs hope, even if it is a false one.

So Dean smiles and kisses his brother again—once on the cheek, where it’s permitted.

 **All right, Sammy. I’ll try.**

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

He does try.

Dean tries every night during those first years of wandering.

He tries while he looks at the moonlit walls of Sammael’s castle rising in the distance.

He tries while he holds a tiny, soft-furred creature in his lap—one of a litter that used to bear fangs and drip venom and now look a little silly with their long, velvety ears and short, fluffy tails. Sam calls them rabbits, and he keeps watch from a distance as Dean delivers the entire litter into the keeping of the humans in the castle: he refuses to leave the poor things to fend for themselves out here.

He tries after Sam offers him their first real kiss, which Sam instigates tentatively less than a week after the castle is too distant to be seen.

He tries as Sam’s eyes slowly fade back to hazel, as his wings and tail first shrink and then disappear. Even Sam’s scars sink into his skin, and the shifting marks fade. Dean is sure that Sam would fight it if he was aware, but there are no mirrors out here, and so Sam doesn’t notice anything is happening until it’s too late. He doesn’t notice until Dean can look over and see his brother again—all the fragments that Dean remembers from Before pieced together into a beautiful, perfect whole.

He tries while the light in his mind strengthens until it has become an almost constant hum, transforming not just creatures and plants and artifacts but the very air itself. The heat breaks as the world changes around them, and a cool breeze rolls through the land, carrying with it the scent of distant flowers.

He tries on the evening after they reach a seemingly endless expanse of water, which first terrifies and then fascinates him. Sam calls the water an ocean, and the roaring swells are waves, and the leathery, acid-dripping birds—once Sam has trapped them with his power and held them still for Dean’s hands—are called gulls. Sam says the sea is the wrong color—it should be blue, not green—but he won’t let Dean near it after Dean passes out while trying to remember the way it ought to be.

Too big, Sam says, and you stopped _breathing_ , Dean, but he has to sleep sometime and Dean is able to sneak away for brief, fleeting touches.

He marvels at the way the new color spreads out from his hands before fading back into the green. Maybe he should be discouraged by the way that the acidic waves reclaim the cleansed water, but he isn’t. Sam didn’t change back all at once either, and this ocean thing is a lot larger than his brother.

Dean tries while he huddles against Sam for warmth and watches white flakes drift down from the sky. Snow, Sam says, and insists on catching one of the larger predators in the area and butchering it before a bonfire. Dean won’t watch while Sam works, but he wears the furs his brother offers him afterwards without argument.

Dean tries. He tries so very, very hard.

It just doesn’t work.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

**What is it?**

Dean has been playing with the small, wriggly animal for almost an hour before he thinks to ask, secure in the knowledge that Sam wouldn’t have released the creature from its bonds of power if it were still dangerous the way that bears and mountain lions are. The creature’s fur was patchy before—its tail forked like a scorpion’s stinger and slick with poison. Now it’s covered with a uniform, cream-colored coat, and has a shorter, thicker tail that it wags from side to side as it lumbers after the small branches Dean tosses for it across the clearing.

“It’s a puppy,” Sam answers. He’s leaning against a tree, watching Dean with the same lack of expression he’s been wearing since Dean gave the creature—the puppy—its first pat. Now, though, he steps forward, crouching down and holding his hand out. The puppy gives a high-pitched yip and obediently stumbles over to lick at his fingers.

“Usually, they’re born in litters,” Sam adds, “but I didn’t see any signs that there are more around, so that might have changed at some point.”

 **Is it going to be okay on its own?** Dean asks as the puppy flops over onto its side. Sam’s fingers find its stomach and scratch while the puppy wriggles delightedly. It looks like it’s grinning up at him, and the tongue hanging from the side of its mouth makes the expression even more good-natured.

Dean’s pretty sure he already knows what the answer to his question is going to be.

“If it was full grown, maybe,” Sam says. He isn’t looking at Dean, eyes fastened on the puppy as it chews on one of his fingers. “But it doesn’t look more than a couple months old. I don’t think it knows enough to hunt on its own.”

Dean’s heart sinks. He hates it when this happens—has hated it ever since they were too far from Sammael’s castle to leave such helpless creatures by its walls. He wishes he’d thought to ask earlier, before he played with it.

“Do you want to keep it?”

Dean transfers his gaze from the puppy to his brother, startled. It’s a question Sam has never asked before: one that Dean has never thought to ask himself.

 **Can we?**

Sam still isn’t looking at Dean, face closed and mouth drawn tight in a way that makes Dean uncomfortable. His brother hasn’t looked this sad in a long time.

“People used to keep them as pets,” Sam answers softly. “Man’s best friend. I brought one home once, a stray, and you—you pretended to hate it, but I could tell you wanted to keep it too.”

Dean doesn’t remember, but that’s nothing new. He never understands Sam’s stories either, but he asks anyway, the same as he always does. **What happened?**

This time, instead of continuing, Sam shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t going to mean anything to you, is it? You don’t—you don’t remember. You don’t remember Dad, or Bobby, or—” Drawing in a sharp breath, he shuts his eyes and drops his head. The puppy is chewing diligently on his wrist now, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

 **Sam?** Dean tries tentatively.

“It isn’t going to work, is it?” his brother whispers. “You aren’t—you aren’t ever going to remember.”

Oh.

Dean shifts a little, rubbing his hands against the grass—soft now, not edged and sharp enough to cut. He searches for a way to gentle the blow, which has been coming for so long, and can’t find one. Finally, he settles for simplicity.

 **No.**

The choked noise Sam makes startles the puppy. Squirming to its feet, it dashes for the other side of the clearing, where it hides beneath a bush and peers out nervously. Dean ignores it, crawling closer to his brother and reaching for him. At the brush of his hand, Sam jerks away, and if he wasn’t before then he’s crying now: harsh, broken sobs.

“It isn’t fair,” he chokes between breaths. “You can—you can remember for everything else, but you can’t—you can’t remember me, you can’t—there’s nothing, you—you lost _everything_ , you—it isn’t fucking _fair_!”

Sam resists Dean’s first attempt to get his arms around his brother, shoving him backward hard enough that he falls over. Sam struggles the second and third times as well. If Dean thought his brother really didn’t want to be touched, he’d stop, but if Sam really didn’t want to be touched he would be pushing Dean away with his power instead of his hands, so he perseveres.

Finally, on Dean’s sixth try, Sam grips him back, hauling him in and hanging on as though _Dean_ is the protector here. It’s an odd feeling, but Dean rocks his brother, and does his best to curl around him like a wall. They stay like that long enough for Dean’s legs to cramp and then, finally, Sam’s sobs begin to ease.

 **I can’t ever be him,** Dean says as gently as possible. **But that doesn’t mean I love you any less.**

 **I know,** Sam answers. He doesn’t use his voice—probably because he isn’t calm enough to manage the words yet. **But I—God, Dean, you’re right here, you’re—you _are_ him, and you don’t even, you don’t remember enough to know that. You don’t remember enough to trust me when I tell you you’re gorgeous, and you don’t—everything we did together, I want you to remember, I want you to know how fucking amazing you are.**

“I want you to have your fucking _memories_ ,” he finishes aloud, bitterly, and Dean rests his head alongside his brother’s and lets Sam’s presence warm the persistent hollows within him.

 **It’s okay, Sammy,** he promises. **I don’t need them. You and me, we’ll make new ones.**

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

They keep the puppy. Sam names it Rumsfeld. Privately, Dean thinks it’s an odd name, but it seems to comfort his brother a little so he doesn’t argue. Sam needs all the comforting he can get right now, and God knows he isn’t taking any from Dean.

For the first time in years, their couplings have become awkward and impersonal. The brief caresses Sam used to offer have vanished, although he’s still as polite as ever. He makes sure Dean eats well, and uses his power to weave together soft nests of grass and leaves for him in the evenings. Whenever Dean asks about a new remembering, Sam’s answers are immediate and thorough.

But he doesn’t speak otherwise, and he does his best not to look at Dean—even in the midst of their couplings, when he either shuts his eyes or turns his face away. Whenever he _does_ happen to look at Dean—and it’s always by chance, Dean senses, an accidental glance—there’s a distant, sad look in his eyes. Like it isn’t really Dean he’s seeing there at all.

Dean is grateful for the puppy’s presence: for its simple, unflagging affection. It helps him feel a little less invisible. Falling asleep with that warm, pudgy body curled up against his own keeps the tears inside where they belong.

Sam doesn’t notice. Sam is too hurt himself to notice.

Neither of them call it what it is, but it’s clear—to Dean, at least—that his brother is in mourning for a man Dean can’t remember, and will never be again.

He has never felt the lack of his memories so keenly before.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It’s overcast on the day they circle back to the ocean, so Dean tastes the spray on his lips before he’s close enough to see that the color of the water has shifted. It isn’t blue exactly, not yet, but it isn’t such a virulent green either. Doesn’t look quite so acidic.

If Sam notices, then he doesn’t say anything. He catches more of those malformed gulls for Dean, as politely and wordlessly as usual, and then releases them back into the sky. Rumsfeld—bigger now, and with a lean elegance to his run—barks and wags his tail as he chases the birds up and down the beach.

When the hunger comes early that evening, Dean undresses and lies on his back in the sand, head turned toward the ocean. There’s a threatening sting behind his eyes as his brother pushes inside of him, and the instant Sam is done Dean moves away, grateful for the deepening shadows that hide the moisture blurring his vision. He makes it behind a nearby sand dune before the tears come, harsh enough to bow his back and drop him to his knees. He sobs there in his quiet way, forcing out all of the pent up pain from the last five months in great, gasping breaths.

Dean cries until he can’t cry anymore and then, exhausted, falls asleep with the lonely wails of the gulls in his ears.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When Dean wakes again, his eyes feel sore and sticky, his mind covered with dry, scratchy static. Stirring, he presses a hand against his chest, which aches just as fiercely as it did before he broke down.

And then flinches as another hand covers his own.

“Hey,” Sam says, and Dean realizes belatedly that it’s his brother’s thigh pillowing his head instead of the sand. The sun has long since set, but the moon is out tonight and the dunes around them are bathed in silver light. Rumsfeld is lying several feet away on his side, asleep.

Slowly, Dean starts to sit up and finds himself stopped by his brother’s hand.

“Don’t, okay?” Sam says. “I have to—I need to talk to you.”

 **What about?**

Sam is silent for a moment and then he says, “I’m sorry.”

Dean, about to take a breath, stills instead.

“These last few months, I—I’ve been distracted, but I should have noticed you were hurting. I should have been there for you.”

Swallowing the lump in his throat is painful, but Dean manages. **I’m okay,** he offers.

“So okay you had to come over here to cry yourself to sleep?” Sam replies.

There’s a hint of reproach in his words, as though Dean did something wrong _(who knows, maybe he did, it wouldn’t be the first time)_ , and Dean flushes. Before he can worry about it too much, though, the unexpected weight of Sam’s hand on his head gentles the rebuke. Dean chances a glance up from the corner of his eye and can see the darkened outline of his brother’s hair shifting in the ocean breeze, the glint of his eyes, the graceful line of his throat.

 **I’m sorry.**

“Why are you apologizing?”

 **Because I shouldn’t have come over here to cry,** Dean answers, and hopes Sam will leave it there because he doesn’t have a clearer answer than that. He doesn’t know how else he might have offended.

But the question comes anyway.

“Why?”

Dean bites his lip and digs the fingers of one hand into the sand, feeling the trapped heat from the day. As the silence stretches out and it becomes clear Dean isn’t going to answer, Sam sighs and starts to stroke his hair.

“Because you should have told me instead,” he reveals. “Dean, when you’re—when you’re hurting, if I don’t notice then you need to tell me. I can’t help if I don’t know there’s a problem.”

Lifting his hand, Dean lets the sand slip through his fingers in a dry rain. **You have other things to think about.**

“You mean more important things,” Sam says. He sounds ... not angry, exactly. More disappointed.

The honest answer— _yes_ —is going to get him in trouble, so Dean manages an awkward shrug instead. Sam’s other hand immediately cups Dean’s chin, turning his head around so that he’s forced to meet the shadowed glint of his brother’s eyes. It feels odd, meeting Sam’s gaze after all this time.

“Nothing—and I mean _nothing_ —is more important to me than you.”

Dean doesn’t understand how that can be—he’s just a mute, not strong or brave or anything special—but the vehemence in his brother’s voice says that it is. Tentatively, he nods and Sam’s grip on his chin loosens. His hand in Dean’s hair, which had stilled, starts to move again.

“Now, tell me why you’re upset.”

Dean doesn’t really want to, but that sounded like an order and he doesn’t think Sam is going to drop this until he gets what he wants. His mental voice is still tentative and faltering as he says, **I know you miss him, and I—I want to understand, but sometimes it ... Sometimes it still hurts.**

Sam has gone still again. “You think I miss my brother,” he repeats.

 **Ever since you accepted that he isn’t coming back,** Dean agrees, digging at the cooling sand with one foot to distract himself from the sore, bruised feeling in his chest. **You’ve been—it’s like he died.**

After a moment, Sam nods. “Yeah, maybe it is a little. Maybe I am mourning him. But that—Dean, that isn’t why I’ve been. That isn’t what I’ve been thinking about.”

Dean lifts his head slightly at that. **It isn’t?**

Sighing, Sam runs a hand through his hair. “It’s ... complicated.”

This time when Dean sits up, Sam doesn’t stop him. **I can understand,** he insists, kneeling in the sand. **If you explain it, I know I can understand.**

Sam lets out a weak laugh and rubs at his eyes with one hand. “ _I_ don’t even understand it,” he mutters, but it isn’t a refusal and Dean waits silently for his brother to decide where to begin. Finally, Sam lets his hand fall back into his lap and says, “You’re not him. How could you be? You don’t—you don’t remember the fire, or the demon, or Dad. But at the same time, I can see so much of him in you, and it—it’s like looking at a ghost, sometimes.”

He sucks in a harsh, short breath and turns his face away, looking out toward the ocean.

“So yeah, I miss him. I miss him like hell. I miss my annoying, self-sacrificing, mullet-rock loving big brother. But he’s gone, and I’m never getting him back, and I—I loved him, but I love you too.”

Sam is crying, Dean realizes—slow, gentle tears that aren’t touching his voice but which leave shining streaks down his cheeks in the moonlight.

“I love you so fucking much, Dean,” he breathes. “I love you just as much as I ever loved him, and it—fuck, it feels like I—like I’m betraying him. He—you—never loved me like that, not the same way, but I still feel like I’m being unfaithful, and that—it hurts, and it’s confusing, and I can’t forget that I—I did this to you. I didn’t mean to, I swear to God I didn’t, but I kept you here. I kept you here when you should have gone with Castiel, and as sorry as I am there’s a big part of me that doesn’t regret it. There’s a part of me that can’t regret it because I have _never_ been more complete than I am when I’m with you.”

“You gave me everything, Dean. You gave me everything I ever wanted and never thought I could have, and you didn’t ask for anything in return, and I just don’t—I don’t know how to make myself accept something like that.”

In the silence that follows, Dean grapples with his brother’s confession. His chest keeps trying to expand because Sam loves him—Sam loves _him_ , not just the lost memory of Sam’s brother—and he keeps on pulling it back in because he doesn’t get to have this. He’s reading this wrong, he must be. There’s no way that someone like Sam could love someone like him, not the way that Sam seems to be saying he does.

“Say something,” Sam rasps finally.

 **Like what?**

“Like—” Sam laughs humorlessly. “I just poured my heart out to you, man. Just—tell me what you’re thinking, okay? Are you angry? Do you want me to fuck off down the beach for a few hours? What?”

The anguish in his brother’s voice is distressing and Dean hastens to assure him, **I’m not angry.**

“Okay.” Sam nods, but his voice is still rough, and when he swallows it’s with evident difficulty. “Okay, that’s a start.”

Encouraged, Dean adds, **I love you.**

He’s said it before, but from the way Sam’s breath catches this is the first time his brother heard him.

 **I love you,** Dean repeats more boldly as the knots in his chest continue to unravel. **And I don’t care how it happened, or who I was before. I love you now, and that’s all that matters.**

Sam’s head gives an abortive shake, like he disagrees. He doesn’t actually say anything, though, and after a moment Dean dares to shift closer.

Sam tenses visibly. “What are you doing?”

 **I want to kiss you.**

“I don’t—Dean, I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

But he doesn’t sound convinced, and he isn’t moving away, so Dean leans closer. **Why not?**

“Because,” Sam breathes, his eyes fastened on Dean’s mouth. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

They’re sharing each other’s air now, and Dean’s skin feels electrified. There’s no hunger, but he’s aroused all the same: balls drawn up tight against his body and cock stiff in his pants. He can see the same want mirrored in his brother’s eyes, which are dark in a way that has nothing to do with the night around them.

 **Then don’t,** Dean says, and eases that final inch forward.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

It isn’t like anything Dean has ever experienced before.

Sam undresses him with gentle, tender hands. He kisses Dean while he tugs his own pants down, and every thrust of his tongue sends a fiery shiver through Dean’s body. And the way Sam looks at him when they’re finally naked beneath the moonlight—with something approaching wonderment—leaves Dean glowing from the inside out, as though the light in his head has blossomed throughout his skin.

“Beauty,” Sam whispers, and Sammael’s taunt sounds like a caress in his mouth.

 **Sammy,** Dean says in return, letting his eyes fall shut and his head tilt back as his brother’s body covers his on the sand.

Sam kisses Dean’s upturned throat once, lips lingering against the scar tissue, and then murmurs, “God, I miss your voice.”

Dean’s chest pulls tight in a minor pang of loss, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it because his brother is already reaching between his legs and easing one finger inside of him. Even without the hunger’s aid, the penetration doesn’t hurt. Dean’s body is accustomed to opening for Sam’s cock after so many years of service, and a single finger poses no difficulty at all. It isn’t enough, actually, and Dean spreads his legs wider and tilts his hips up in silent demand.

 **Talk to me,** Sam orders, stroking his finger in and out while mouthing at the corner of Dean’s jaw. **Tell me what you want.**

 **More,** Dean answers as he strains up. **I want more.**

Obediently, Sam pushes a second finger in beside the first and then spreads them, setting off the familiar, pleasant burn that tells Dean his body is performing as it’s supposed to. His hands lift from the sand where they were resting to trace the sleek lines of his brother’s body—one following the twist and flex of Sam’s back muscles and the other tracing the jut of his hip. As Sam works a third finger in alongside the first two, Dean sucks in increasingly shallow breaths and squirms eagerly against the sand.

“Hold onto me,” Sam whispers suddenly, breath warm and wet against Dean’s ear.

Dean casts a quick glance down in question and then tosses his head back again as his brother drives all three fingers in to press against the shocking place inside of him. He gasps at the force of the pleasure that surges through him, digging his fingers into Sam’s skin. Sam bears down harder, deliberately stroking that spot, and Dean’s muscles clench and press in snugly around his brother’s fingers. Sam keeps rubbing until Dean is lightheaded and frantic—until his cock is leaving wet, leaking trails across his stomach with every jerk of his hips—and then withdraws his fingers on a long, slow drag that leaves Dean empty and shuddering.

 **Please,** he thinks, thrusting up. **Oh God, _please_.**

“Shh,” Sam soothes, nosing at Dean’s cheek. “Gonna take care of you.”

As Dean parts his lips in a silent moan, his brother catches them with his own. Sam licks into Dean’s mouth, rubbing their bodies together with strong, sinuous movements, and Dean shakes against him.

 **Come for me,** Sam commands, deepening the kiss while pushing his fingers inside again—four this time, and with a twisting motion that scrapes mercilessly against Dean’s sweet spot.

Dean can’t cry out as he climaxes, but the force of it bows his body and his throat strains silently. Shock waves thunder through him, making his cock twitch wildly as it spills across his stomach. In the midst of everything else, comes a new sensation—Sam replacing his fingers with his cock, Sam entering him—and it’s almost too intense to be pleasurable.

Dean blinks rapidly as tears blur his vision, and when he can see again Sam’s face is inches from his own. His brother’s eyes are intent, his mouth serious. His hair falls around them in a warm, silken curtain, closing them off from the moonlit world beyond.

“Beauty,” Sam says again, a caress that shivers over Dean’s entire body.

Sam is unmoving as Dean’s climax releases him, but Dean is still intensely aware of his brother’s cock: a heavy, warm presence joining them. His own cock is softening where it is caught between their stomachs, but arousal has already begun to seep back in around the edges of the languid exhaustion weighing him down.

Biting his lower lip, he forces his muscles to work and manages to raise his legs on either side of his brother’s body. With a little more effort, he hooks his ankles together and pulls their bodies flush.

 **Come on,** he says when Sam still doesn’t move. **You can fuck me, I’m ready.**

“Wait,” Sam answers, although there’s obvious strain in his voice. “Wait, I want—I want you with me.” A shift of his hips where Dean’s limp cock is trapped makes it clear what he means by that. “I can wait for you.”

Too weary to argue, Dean lets his legs fall back down and Sam shifts up onto his elbows so that he can stroke Dean’s face with both hands. That doesn’t seem to be enough, though, because a moment later he cups Dean’s cheeks and tilts his face up so that he can drop light kisses on Dean’s forehead, his cheeks, his nose, anywhere he can reach.

Sam’s cock pulses inside of Dean, Sam’s breath mingles with his, Sam’s lips and hands and eyes keep caressing his face. It’s more than enough stimulation to revive Dean’s flagging cock, but what pushes him over the edge into frantic need is the intimate sensation of his brother’s mind enveloping his in a cherishing fog.

 **Fuck me,** he begs. **Sammy, please. I’m ready!**

As tightly as their lower bodies are pressed together, Sam has to feel the lengthening of Dean’s cock, but he continues the kisses and soft strokes as though Dean hasn’t spoken.

 **Sam!** Dean tries again, lifting one leg from the sand again and hooking it around his brother’s hip.

“Slow,” Sam murmurs finally as he kisses his way back to Dean’s mouth. “I want to go slow.” The last few words are all but lost between their lips—Dean’s fault, in part, because he’s pushing up to meet his brother halfway.

 **At this rate,** he complains, **the ocean’s going to finish remembering before you get down to business.**

Sam laughs into the kiss—genuine amusement for once—and the happiness in his smile as he pulls away is all but blinding. “Take away your memory and you’re still a wiseass.”

 **Takes one to know one,** Dean responds without thinking. He isn’t sure where the words come from, but they seem to be the right ones because Sam laughs again and, bracing himself, finally starts to move.

Each thrust is tender—almost careful, as though Sam is afraid of breaking him. He continues to kiss Dean as they rock together, and Dean must have been fucked a million times, but he’s never felt it this deeply before. It doesn’t feel like fucking, actually—seems like there should be a separate name for what they’re doing now. Something like worship.

He doesn’t know how long it continues—long enough that it seems Sam has had enough time to caress every centimeter of his body, long enough for Dean to be surprised by the continued darkness. Surely the sun should have risen hours ago. But finally, when Dean isn’t sure there was ever anything more than this—anything but Sam moving over and within him—his brother’s movements speed.

“Dean,” Sam pants, his voice mingling with the sound of the waves. “ _Dean_.”

Dean rocks up to meet his brother, spreading his thighs wide enough that his muscles tremble and burn, and Sam gives a final, jerking thrust and then stills. As slick warmth floods him, Dean climaxes again with a noiseless cry. Tightening his grip on Sam’s arm and flank, he holds his brother flush against him while their minds mingle in a single, blissful blaze.

They lie motionless after, still joined together and both panting and shivering as the ocean breezes lick across the sheen of sweat coating their skin. They can’t stay that way forever, though, and Sam finally eases himself out with a reluctant groan.

Instead of collapsing on top of Dean the way Sammael usually did, or moving away the way he always has before, he rolls over onto his back and pulls Dean after him. Dean goes gladly, heedless of the messy smear of release on his stomach and between his thighs. Sam’s arms fit around him perfectly—not confining or encumbering, but comforting.

Safe and sated and loved, Dean falls asleep with a smile on his face.

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/leonidaslion/pic/0001bgbp/)

When he opens his eyes again, Sam’s fingers are in his hair. It’s still dark out, but there’s a deep, purple edge to the air that tells Dean dawn isn’t that far off. Smiling drowsily, he turns his face to the side and kisses his brother’s chest.

“Morning,” Sam says, kissing him back on the top of his head.

 **How long have you been up?** Dean asks. He considers sitting up and then, lazy, rubs his cheek against his brother’s chest as he settles in again.

“I didn’t go to sleep,” Sam admits. “I was thinking.”

Dean would be worried—Sam’s thoughts usually lead to tears on one or both of their parts—but there’s nothing but contentment in his brother’s voice and Sam’s hands are calm on Dean’s body. His heart beats steadily against Dean’s ear.

 **About what?**

When Sam doesn’t immediately answer him, Dean shuts his eyes again and drifts, lulled by the rhythmic pounding of the waves. He’s just beginning to slip under again when his brother finally says, “You’ve been saving me as long as I can remember, and I was thinking.”

Sam stops again, and this time Dean is intrigued enough to shake his lethargy away and push up onto one elbow so that he can look his brother in the face.

 **You were thinking ...** he prods.

One corner of Sam’s mouth twitches up and he cups the side of Dean’s face in one oversized hand.

“I was thinking that it’s time I started saving you back,” he says. “And I’m going to. Dean, I’m going to—I’m going to make you believe in yourself again. I’m going to show you how beautiful, and smart, and wonderful you really are.”

Dean’s breath catches at the earnest fervor in his brother’s voice. He’s shaken by the depth of the faith in Sam’s eyes. Being loved is one thing—it’s wonderful, feels the way Dean thinks flying must—but love is something you can offer a favored pet. This—the reverent devotion in Sam’s gaze—is something else entirely. It’s something vast and daunting and more than a little bit terrifying.

 **I’m not—you can’t just flip a switch inside me and make me believe I’m something else,** Dean says after a moment.

“No, I can’t,” Sam agrees, tucking a stray piece of Dean’s hair behind his ear. “But in the words of the brilliant Dean Winchester, we’re not going anywhere. We’ve got time.” Then, with a broad, affectionate smile stretching his lips, he leans forward and kisses Dean.

Sam’s mouth is slow and thorough, his tongue just barely brushing against Dean’s, and for once there’s no heat in the kiss. It isn’t any less passionate, but Dean thinks that this kiss has less to do with coupling and more with the way that Sam looks at him. He keeps waiting for Sam to stop, or at least to shift the mood, but when the rays of the rising sun begin to warm Dean’s back, Sam is still going—just as gentle and chaste as ever, like they have all the time in the world.

As he lifts his hand to his brother’s face and kisses him back, Dean is beginning to think that maybe ... just maybe ... they do.


	11. Demonic Lexicon

_Eresh dgrayvk rill_ – What are you?

 _Agrukni_ – Go to sleep.

 _Ctusyngkni_ – Stand up.

 _Drtsyan ctusynghni_ – I said, stand up.

 _Areshna_ – Mine.

 _Eresh kvralt ras?_ – Who sent you?

 _Ras?_ – Who?

 _Aresh grahd._ – You will answer me.

 _Fehyrd yg ral_ – Where did you get this?

 _Drtsyat j grelju yg ztinkruk hureshna Sammael_ – Sammael said that he wants this marked as his.

 _Yg? Prahlissi, jes’dgrayv nis?_ – This? Awful ugly, isn’t it?

 _Quesil gnavi tedruk. U jasi drtsyat eresh ztinkruk nis ptreigissi._ – He’s got odd tastes. But he also said he wants you to pretty it up a bit.

 _Nehdhd._ – Will do.

 _Hrah. Rekzil frahkna. Sel dgrayvk za ptreig nur Sammael._ – There. Good pet. Now you’re all pretty for Sammael.

 _Miharl Sammael._ – Lord Sammael

 _Hryt grek hureshnrd eresh._ – You were supposed to mark him.

 _Oureghi, Sammael!_ – Mercy, Sammael!

 _Feshh_ – Shh

 _Feshh, areshna dgrayvk. Eresh yrithahd. Feshh._ – Shh, you’re mine. I’ll take care of you. Shh.

 _Eresh hureshnt grakesh, quil grek dgrayvuk nasthurg._ – Something marked you, so it has to be possible.

 _Fehyrhd yasr eresh hureshnrd._ – I will find a way to mark you.

 _Jescha_ – No

 _Areshna. Ysath areshna, eresh hureshnhd, areshna dgrayvk._ – Mine. Fucking mine, gonna mark you, you’re mine.

 _Selyrtrk._ – Incubus

 _Jescha, jes’selyrtrk. Evn grakesh dgrayv—nfres cvrasyn. Ufegirdel, eresh jes’dgrayrd? Qait rihtk nedril hfrunt gemna li’eresh ne eresh ufegirt rhasa._ \- No, not an incubus. But there’s something—like a contamination. You were infected, weren’t you? One of those nasty bottom-feeders got their claws into you and infected you with their poison.

 _Yg eresh valekig? Dgraykig qaitr’ras eresh hureshnig?_ – Did they give you this? Were they the ones who marked you?

 _Jes’dgrayrd jescha. Dtrayuld hgrashi ztinkrud eresh, mre jes’trakaun aresh. Aresh crihauk jeshil._ – Doesn’t matter. You can call all you want, I’m not touching you again. No one controls me.

 _Trethni._ – Come here.

 _Areshna dgrayvk nfra’ri hureshna areshna jes’dgrayvk eresh._ – You’re mine even if you’re not marked it.

 _Eresh ral skrivan girlhd._ – You stay where I put you.

 _Crivni_ – Continue.

 _Ladrisni. Eresh ztinkrun ladrisna._ \- Watch. I want you to watch.

 _Nis nhrevni_ – Clean it up.

 _Ysa_ – Fuck

 _Trehki pragdr vatrim dresha jrekvr_ – Various demonic curses, no direct translation

 _Ta’vrisa grek trnvranikt_ – Take him out to the pens.

 _Feghrsni_ – Wait.

 _Graj krejnrd ztinkrud eresh?_ – Do you want to see her?

 _Graj reshikad eresh?_ – Would you bless her?

 _Graj dseljud eresh?_ – Would you name her?

 _Fresa. Nak tesliknrd qrilvek dgrayv. Hyndrn dselj lakrik. Fresa._ – Please. She’s the first to be born free. She needs a special name. Please.


End file.
